What to do after doing the starting questline with trader?

[Richard]

What do i do? just whatever? and can the trader place be broken into by zombies?

[Abomination]

1: the trader CANT be broken into, it is invincable

2: think of something, make a farm, build a barrack's that defends itself from zeds, got a minibike yet?, just do what ever you can think of. the questline at the moment is kinda a set of tutorial's, but that is it.

3: i assume your new so ill give you a tip i learnt late into playing the game that makes it alot easier at the start, you can scrap ore like iron/metal fragments, you can scrap glass etc without a furnace to get material's you can craft more late game items with at the start, so if you want to make barbed wire at the start of the game u can, and upgrade to metal as well useing this.

4: another tip, look on the dirt path's, they will lead to a position of interest, like a house or a camp or something, fortify the area with traps, for the first night build a fire, and dont leave the fire on when you dont need to, since it attract's zeds, ps check steam for guides, like https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=803758237&searchtext=scrap

^ this helps me ALOT

[Zhaylin]

Are you playing on Navezgane or Random Gen? Doesn't really matter either way, but if you're new to the game and playing Nav, avoid radiated areas (you'll take damage when you enter the biome until you die), the Wasteland and big towns until you skill up.

I usually find a house straight away, store extra loot in it then start grinding mats to craft stone axes/wooden clubs and arrows/plant fiber clothes during the night.
Search trash bags for pipes or destroy toilets for them if you find houses. You need pipes for a forge.
I kill enough animals for 20 hides (also for the forge)
I gather clay (it shows up as orange on the map) until 1 or 2 shovels break.

By day 2, I have my forge up and running. Try not to scrap iron ore (or any brass items). You get more out of smelting it. I usually have to make my own cooking pot because I have little luck finding them early on lol. If you do find a pot, you don't need to waste mats on an anvil just yet. You should focus on making forged iron for upgraded tools.
Gather all the Goldenrod (yellow flowers). Turn several (I go with 10) into seeds. Turn the rest into tea (cooked with water, so be sure to fill up empty jars at a water source then make boiled water). You can also make bacon and eggs if you have a pot. Both are wonderful to raise your wellness.
(As a general rule, I avoid towns until my wellness is 120. Dogs can be fatal quickly otherwise)

By day 3, I start on my base if not before then. I usually start my farm on this day too. Make a hoe with some of that forged iron then use it on dirt ground. Plant any seeds in it to get double harvest (one for use, one for planting). Using fertilizer later on yields even more crops.

I also recommend NOT spending single points (except for the 2 after the first 2 quests). If you save 10 points, you can get better perks. The rest raise fairly quickly just through use.

Also, I play with 120 minute days/ 18 hours daylight to get the most out of my time. If you play anything else, you'll be on a different schedule than my examples.

By day 7, I have concrete and steel. I fight the horde. Having a decent base by day 7 means I'm free to explore and do whatever else without having to worry about security.

Just have fun. Mix it up. Try different base build or buy decorative stuff from the trader (or find scaving) and deck out your new home. Try out different weapons. Your imagination is your only limitation (within reason lol).

[kkitts]

Dogs are rare in most biomes in the first week, except for burnt and blasted terrain. In those biomes, dogs can spawn at any time...and in any number. My advice is mostly same as above, but to find a suburb in a grassland biome ASAP (follow the main paved roads). Grassland has moderate temperatures, and plentiful animals for meat.

If you're out in the middle of the wilderness and can't see a road, get as high up as possible, and the game will render main roads at low res (it won't add what you see to the map, though...I wish it would). Try to find a suburb within the first 5 days if at all possible, and stay out of burnt / blasted terrain. If you encounter those biomes, turn around and run away quickly (as dogs can spawn if you're near the edge of those biomes). Try to find a suburb with a food fort, as it has pretty good walls to start with, and can be upgraded easily before horde night on night 7. You can use any sturdy building, but you need to be able to move around, and with the food fort, you can easily run around on the rooftops on the east side of the fort, plus snipe downwards.

Work on your bow skills and kill as many zombies as possible. A good policy for putting points into skills in the first week is:

Sexual Tyrannosaurus (1) - stamina regen+
Leather Tanning - scrap leather items, turn hides into leather
Quality Joe (1) - better loot
Fast Eddie (1) - faster loot
Miner 2049er (1) - faster work with mining tools (pickaxe / fireaxe / shovel / etc)
Hidden Stash (1 - 3) - better inventory at the trader
Quicker Crafting (1 - 5) - faster item creation
Fixer (1 - 5) - better repairs, slower degradation
Treasure Hunter (1 - 3) - find buried treasure within a much smaller radius

Don't put points into skills that will go up with use (smithing skills, gun skills, tailoring, etc). Level skills like Miner 2049er and Quicker Crafting as your character and skill levels allow. As soon as you can, skip Concrete Making and take Steel Smithing, so you can make the best tools in the game (including wrenches and steel mining tools). Use stone axes and claw hammers as much as possible to raise your Construction Tools skill up to 40 for Steel Smithing (building walls and log spikes at a food fort will help raise this quickly). Save every wrench you find until you find a workbench (so you can repair wrenches by combining them). Always keep a couple in reserve until you get Steel Smithing (1), so you can make the forged steel to make wrenches with.

Priorities:
Loot book, tool and pill stores (for skill books, tools and chemistry benches).
Loot gas stations (for gas, beer and workbenches).
Kill animals for food; keep all parts (they're all useful later on).
Build a base you can spend the night in safely.
Build a fighting area away from your base where you can fight off the hordes on horde nights (use a food fort for the first two weeks, since you won't be able to make concrete for a while if you put your points into Steel Smithing).

Good luck. Survive.

[gamerhelligon]

Try to imagine yourself in the game. What would you do if you woke up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, besides mess yourself.....lol


Find food, find shelter, find nests for feathers for arrows, gather rock, wood, loot everything.

It's an open world, you can set the options to however you like. Want no zeds? turn them off and learn the mechanics of building. Want longer days? set it in the options.

my first week is like this almost everytime I start a new world.....


Day1: do starter quests to get you tools and bow. Look in the immediate area and loot everything, especially nest. If near a house, note it on your map as you might be staying the night there. chop trees, bust up rocks. Venture out to find a house nearby if there isn't one when I started. Explore the surrounding area but not to far as to not make it back to the house by dark.

Day 2: By now you should have found a decent place to hide in at nights. Make a wooden chest and put it in the house. Hunt deer, pigs, any animal for food and skins. Keep looting everything. If your pack is full, go back to the chest and unload then go back and keep hunting and looting.

Day 3: Chop wood, gather plant fibers, bust rocks and keep an eye out for new loot you haven't got yet. Try to get things for a forge. Keep exploring the area.

Day 4-6: Should have enough food and water to last a couple days now. Start work on a base. I usually do towers with tunnels under the house I stay the night at to the tower itself. (good thing to do is dig tunnels at night below the house.) See youtube videos on base or tower designs if you have no clue.

Day 7: Last minute prep to make sure I have all spikes / ditches finished. Make sure I have spare wood to repair my bow and loot every nest I can find to make arrows (if you think you have enough arrows...your wrong..lol) Wait til nightfall and kill everything that moves.

Nights I always dig tunnels under the house or building I put up to hide in for the night and am making my work area. Sort out all my loot from the day. Like I said before, I use 1 chest to just unload my loot in then go back out looting. I never do anything inside my work area / base during the day unless I HAVE to. Explore, loot, and kill everything that moves. And if you get real creative, try building new things. like a garage for you minibike. A walk in garden...use you imagination and don't be afraid to fail..it teaches you what not to do next time.

[CptnHarlock]

Originally posted by Nudist Beach Leader:

What do i do? just whatever? and can the trader place be broken into by zombies?

You won the game! Congrats. Now continue with next game. :)

Just kidding. It's an "open world survival game". Those quests are to get you to understand the basics - they are not the purpose of the game. Now start exploring and building, farming, mining.

Oh - there is a big party some guys and gals throw on the 7th day at 22:00. be sure to be there. It's intense!

[gamerhelligon]

Don't need to be there actually...the party will come to them....muahahahaha!!!

Oh and don't mention the day 14 or 21 party either,,,it's a surprise...lol

[rpackc]

Traders don't usually have much value. Very often they're so far away that they're impractical. Main reason I go there at all is to get the quest off my screen. I went there once in one iteration thinking I was going to get rich on my backpack full of .44 magnums but what you learn only by experience is that your useless trader stops buying the same weapon after 3 or 4 purchases. The devs have nerfed weapons/weapons parts drops so it takes much longer to assemble weapons. I've been lacking in a caliper after 50 game days and having looted 8 cities, only then did I visit him a second time to buy a caliper, which he didn't have, though he did have a purple xbow which I did buy mostly because I've never been able to build past green level xbow's.

And besides that, when you do go there, especially early game, you usually don't have enough coin or sellable stuff for anything anyway. About the only thing you can get only from the trader is the recipe for making beer and hop seeds.

[CptnHarlock]

Originally posted by rpackc:

Traders don't usually have much value. Very often they're so far away that they're impractical. Main reason I go there at all is to get the quest off my screen. I went there once in one iteration thinking I was going to get rich on my backpack full of .44 magnums but what you learn only by experience is that your useless trader stops buying the same weapon after 3 or 4 purchases. The devs have nerfed weapons/weapons parts drops so it takes much longer to assemble weapons. I've been lacking in a caliper after 50 game days and having looted 8 cities, only then did I visit him a second time to buy a caliper, which he didn't have, though he did have a purple xbow which I did buy mostly because I've never been able to build past green level xbow's.

And besides that, when you do go there, especially early game, you usually don't have enough coin or sellable stuff for anything anyway. About the only thing you can get only from the trader is the recipe for making beer and hop seeds.

If you build our base and move your belongings close to the trader - then the trader is never too far away. :)

There are techniques to handling the trader:
- Do not sell worn out things. Even lower quality things in good condition will brng more money than high level in poor condition.
- Sell Silver, old and Diamonds in SMALL AMOUNTS. Even one at a time. This will bring your bartering up very fast.
- Vary what you sell. He gets "full" on items.
- Keep track of the restocking timer and visit accordingly.

[Richard]

k and ty all for the help and tips. also can't wait for those parties lol.

[Zhaylin]

Also, as soon as I start a game, I start making 1/2 wood blocks. I sold 500 on day 2 and got enough money to buy his mining helmet. (I had to race the sell button though. It kept wanting to go back to 1 but I finally won and sold them all. I don't know if there's a prefered amount he normally purchases)

I'm a builder, so I love buying out his decorative items. He'll eventually carry calipers too, which I'll buy if RG is being stingy :)