Day 1-7 Milestones for New Players?

[SBGaming]

Having recently picked up the game, though been familiar with it for a little while through a handful of videos over the last year or two... the physics defying water was... interesting to say the least.

TL;DR: My throughts about milestones for those new to the game at the bottom.

Anyway, having played two Single Player games so far on the base map Navezgane, my first game lasted all of two days. I was in the west part of the map, had accumulated a meagre supply of resources (Looting was attrocious... more containers empty), came across the Strip Club and broke in, and immediately got exploded by a mine. Respawned in some other location to the north, and made the trek back to my dropped loot. Climbed my way up to the top of the strip club and setup a small camp. Returned back inside the strip club to be disappointed by the limited loot, and climbed back up on the roof to stay the evening. The next day I went exploring and gathering resources, but being new to the game and not thinking of looking up a map of the map I'm on, I struggled to find a water source, though now I know I could have gone east and come across water. Died of starvation and/or dehydration on Night 2.

My guess is that if I was new to the Apocalypse knowing absolutely nothing about Survival, I'd probably survive a couple days as well.

My second game turned out a bit better, though I had a rough start. Found a lot more resources, but no source of water. Started in the north at the Snow Biome, and headed West. Found the School and the Football stadium, and stealthed my way through the parking lot looting cars as I went, only to realize that although I had riled up some of the zombies in the area, one in particular, a Football Zombie Player was the one zombie that decided to come after me. Found out the hard way that the Football Zombie Player can run, and will keep running. Fled west desperate to try to get out of reach, climbed half way up a small but steep mound (just northwest of the police station), but he found his way up the slope, and after a quick battle, died a second time... and started back at my original spawn location in the Snow Biome, without any Resources, having mostly cleared out the area on Day 1.

Day 2 was spent making the trek back to my dropped loot, and when I returned to the scene of my previous death, Football Zombie is roaming the area. Tried stealthing into the area, but had to back out quickly. Made a second attempt, and while I got back to my stuff, I couldn't carry it all, and had to leave some of my stuff behind. Ran as fast as I could further west, up a hill, and then once I got over the ridge went into Stealth, and managed to lose my pursuers.

At this point I'm starving and dehydrated, consume whatever food and water I have available, and pretty sure I got dysentry/diarrhea, and went in search of shelter for the evening, since it was afternoon, and the last thing I wanted to be is out in the open at night. Eventually found a small pond between Perishton and the Police Station, and although I had containers, I couldn't figure out how to drink from the pond, or fill up my containers to be cooked later. Found a small army camp nearby and then a small house to the south east, which is where I currently am. The house itself is a single floor with an upper loft that is inaccessible. Using a bunch of Wood Frames I made a staircase to climb up to the Loft. That night on Day 2, I died once again of most likely Dehydration because there was otherwise nothing that I could do. Thankfully I had placed down a bedroll.

The next 3 days was focused on accumulating Yuccas, Wood, making a run for water, and any basic resources. I repaired all the holes in the house to be able to stay undetected, and removing windows to fortify the house so that I could remain undetected by any passing zombies. By Day 5 or 6 I decide the best thing to do was to start digging a ditch, and build a few spike traps. By the evening of Day 7, I have the ditch a couple blocks wide and 2-3 blocks deep on two sides of the house. I closed off some of the ways into the compound with Wood Spikes, but not enough time to really secure the place from a Night 7 Horde.

Day 7 I decide to put a new door and a bit of a balcony on the upper floor of the house so that I could go out and engage the horde with bow and arrow. I did the same thing on the other side of the house, as I'm fairly certain I'll need it. Night on Day 7 is approaching, and I'm hesitating returning back into the game to the try to survive the night. Learned much on this second playthrough and got much further. Want to give it another go, but this time in Multiplayer. I'm trying to get a friend interested in it to give it a go (he plays Minecraft so I imagine he'd be interested), and I even bought a two-pack during the Winter sale so he'll have little excuse to try it out, if he's getting a free copy.

So, after that long-winded explanation of my time with the game, I'm curious what kind of milestones players new to the game should aim for in the preparation for surviving your first horde night, other than getting a bunch of your friends together to have numbers on your side (and to share in the workload). I've read some Getting Started Guides, but they were very broad, and perhaps out of date.

My thoughts are:

Day 1: Scavenge as many resources as you can. Move around as much as you can, and be on the lookout for a potential place to hide out for the night.

Day 2: Keep scavenging and accumulating resources, only stopping to recover your stamina. The priority should be on finding a water source, and a spot for a more permanent base.

Day 3-5: Dig in and secure a location. Dig your trenches, and chop down trees for Wood Spikes and other defenses.

Day 6-7: Final preparations, last minute scavenging, intermediate and advanced crafting if you got lucky to get the resources to do so. Found no Clay or other components to make a Forge to do anything with the multitude of Raw Iron I had dug up.

I've since spent some time on the forums here, so I'm a bit better prepared to give it a go a third time around, and all the better if I had someone to participate with that could speed up preparations and defenses, as well as being able to team up on Zombies. That might be what I need to do.

Your thoughts?

[Saxon]

I keep restarting my game everytime I feel like the 7 day hordes can't really threaten me anymore. And I think you have a pretty solid summary of the first week.

My first milestone is finding a damn cooking pot! Usually I get one on day 1 or 2. After that water is never a concern again. On a single rare occasion I couldn't find one for the life of me and I had to craft it in a forge.

Fortunately the mining helmet is a very common spawn, and it makes the game infinately easier. Even if I don't find one I can craft it manually with fairly common materials once I get a workbench which is easily looted from one of the many garages in the game.

Getting a forge, followed by a workbench, chemistry station (generally by looting one), are other big mile stones. And once I get my cement mixer and usually the minibike around the same time I'm close to declare my game "won", and it's time to start all over again.

[Ghostlight]

Day 3-5: Dig in and secure a location. Dig your trenches...

Trenches are almost always a bad idea. The zombles will fall into them then try to get to you by digging horizontally, which they are damn good at. If the area is soft dirt, they get through it like moles. We lost an entire base to collapse. Not because we dug trenches but because the motel across the street had a swimming pool, which is essentially a small trench. The majority of the Horde fell in there and we didn't realise the extent of the tunnels they had dug under our base - until morning came and it all collapsed. True story.

Also there is no reason not to have a forge by day 5-ish.

Getting a forge, followed by a workbench, chemistry station (generally by looting one), are other big mile stones. And once I get my cement mixer and usually the minibike around the same time I'm close to declare my game "won", and it's time to start all over again.

That's about day #10 by my reckoning*. Surely it's worth going a bit further? The Hordes will get bigger and more challenging, creating an arms race between you and them. I believe they scale to your level now? So until you are level 200, you have not beaten the true "end-game" of any particular map. (I think)

* I have only played in servers with 3 or more co-op players thus far. Pace might be slower for 1 player where you cannot split the tasks (and hence the skill points).

[Ch53dVet]

For me, the forge is always first on my list after completing the tutorial. The forge is key to making a cooking pot, glass jars for converting gray water into drinking water early on in the game, also it helps in creating the better, than stone, iron tools for easier resource gathering.

After the tutorial phase I'll scour the nearby country-side for that, split-level, prefab-ranch-house that has a self-contained, already made forge.

In all of the games I've played I don't have to go far from my birth-area to locate one. But, before moving into it you'll need a good compliment of stone arrows and a decent level bow to evict its current occupants. There won't be that many to defeat as your first in-game encounter of zombies will be few in number and rather easy to defeat with your early primitive weapons.

Once you have the house and forge all fired up and ready to use you can breathe a sigh of relief from worring about the encroaching darkness w/o a safe place to lay your head in the middle of it.

Your only worries will be about keeping your guard up all the while you're stockpiling all the nearby resources you can gather and squeeze into your safety net of a house before loosing your first days light.

[gamerhelligon]

Only thing I would add is hunt every animal you see. I actively hunt almost exlusively on day 2 just to stockpile meat.


I play 1 life only and turn off loot respawn. I challange myself to be more active and careful in everything I do.

[Lesh-9]

The best piece of advice I can give a new player is ALWAYS loot every birds nest you see...no exeptions. I don't care how inconvenienced it makes you.....get that damn nest. Those eggs will go towards bacon and eggs to start your wellness increase until the garden is going with fertilized soil . Those feathers will go towards power leveling weapon skill (arrows or bolts are your vanilla ranged damage). You should ALWAYS assume guns are a bonus DPS source...do not assume they are what you should always have in this game. It is totally possible to live off feathers as your DPS source with proper base traps.

Weapon skill means higher club crafting and better damage so you can walk in like Rambo and smash heads instead of always playing the "stay away ranged only play style".

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by Jurjen:

My first milestone is finding a damn cooking pot! Usually I get one on day 1 or 2. After that water is never a concern again. On a single rare occasion I couldn't find one for the life of me and I had to craft it in a forge.

I can't remember if in my first game I came across a cooking pot (fairly certain I did), but in the second game, I immediately came across two of them as one of my first loot in the nearby house. A second would be useful if you decide to setup a second camp elsewhere and want to leave one at home.

Fortunately the mining helmet is a very common spawn, and it makes the game infinately easier. Even if I don't find one I can craft it manually with fairly common materials once I get a workbench which is easily looted from one of the many garages in the game.

Haven't found a mining helmet yet. The closest thing I came across was a Football Helmet from one of the zombies I finally managed to kill. One of the components to the Mining Helmet, but looking at the other components, I haven't come across anything except Duct Tape.

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

Trenches are almost always a bad idea. The zombles will fall into them then try to get to you by digging horizontally, which they are damn good at. If the area is soft dirt, they get through it like moles. We lost an entire base to collapse. Not because we dug trenches but because the motel across the street had a swimming pool, which is essentially a small trench. The majority of the Horde fell in there and we didn't realise the extent of the tunnels they had dug under our base - until morning came and it all collapsed. True story.

Also there is no reason not to have a forge by day 5-ish.

I'm guessing the easiest way to get one is to find one in the world. Looking at the components required to build one, I've been no where close enough to have scavenged the components required to make one at a place of my choosing.

I'm aware that the zombies dig. My plan was to fill in the trench with spikes. I've heard it can be an effective strategy, otherwise I wouldn't have spent time digging. If I had an entire additional week to prepare, I think I would have been good, but it took until atleast Day 4 or 5 to be finally in a comfortable position and away from the verge of death to actually start to think about defenses.

Originally posted by Ch53dVet:

For me, the forge is always first on my list after completing the tutorial. The forge is key to making a cooking pot, glass jars for converting gray water into drinking water early on in the game, also it helps in creating the better, than stone, iron tools for easier resource gathering.

After the tutorial phase I'll scour the nearby country-side for that, split-level, prefab-ranch-house that has a self-contained, already made forge.

In all of the games I've played I don't have to go far from my birth-area to locate one. But, before moving into it you'll need a good compliment of stone arrows and a decent level bow to evict its current occupants. There won't be that many to defeat as your first in-game encounter of zombies will be few in number and rather easy to defeat with your early primitive weapons.

I'm thinking a good Day 3 Milestone would be acquiring a Forge, either by somehow gathering the necessary resources, or by finding one in the world. Gives you enough time to utilize it in preparation for the Day 7 horde. Looking at the map of Navezgane, I see a few nearby to the areas that I've been to in the game.

Regarding evicting the current occupants, would it be enough to walk in the area, draw their attention, lure them away, and once far enough away go into stealth, circle around and claim the now empty location for yourself? Do zombies return to the area that they spawn or does their AI keep them wandering with no memory of where they came from?

Originally posted by Lesh-9:

The best piece of advice I can give a new player is ALWAYS loot every birds nest you see...no exeptions. I don't care how inconvenienced it makes you.....get that damn nest. Those eggs will go towards bacon and eggs to start your wellness increase until the garden is going with fertilized soil . Those feathers will go towards power leveling weapon skill (arrows or bolts are your vanilla ranged damage). You should ALWAYS assume guns are a bonus DPS source...do not assume they are what you should always have in this game. It is totally possible to live off feathers as your DPS source with proper base traps.

Weapon skill means higher club crafting and better damage so you can walk in like Rambo and smash heads instead of always playing the "stay away ranged only play style".

Yep, Birds nests are essential. I'm spending more time looking at the ground as I move about in an attempt to find as many as I can so that I can craft arrows. With the low level bows, and low level in archery, it takes more than a few headshots to take one down, though by Day 6 or 7 I've had enough pratice to actually not use 6-10 arrows on a single zombie.

I may have to put more points into Melee weapons, though judging how close you need to be can be a problem. If you're too close, you risk getting hit, if you're too far away you eat up your stamina. The most annoying thing are the crawlers. Standing up, I can't seem to hit them unless I get very close, but at that point they can hit back. Crouching down to get to their level is slightly better but also comes with problems. I've mostly stuck with bows, or simply avoiding the slow moving ones for that reason, though with that said, your skill in melee will never improve with that strategy.

The game really needs a spear weapon, and from a general search, it looks like it's been a requested addition for a few years now.

Thanks for the replies. I'm about as new to the game as possible with the exception of watching a handful of videos over the years.

[Blue]

Most of my 7 days is; 1. Find house with forge 2. make bow and hunt for guns 3. craft spikes and surround house 4. kill lots of zombies for loot & levels 5. Loot city if found 6. plant garden if spare time. 7. Deal with 7 day horde. I usually progress really fast with my nomadic zombie killing play style. Having all the guns at max quality and crafting stations by day 10 isn't abnormal for me. My last world I crafted a bow on day 1 and went hunting for ferals in the city to get guns.