Pro Tips

[Sandtrail]

I know there are a lot of guides out there saying what you should and should not do, but they can be really lengthy and I just don't like reading pages worth of general gameplay material. The videos on youtube are good, but some of those guys are idiots and the informative ones are kinda boring. So, I'm just gonna make a list of some things that have always worked since alpha 4 (that's when I started playing). If anyone has anything else to add please feel free. Just try not to make this a debate thread.

1. If you start in the industrial biome, GET OUT! There are loads more zombies there and they seem to spawn faster in that area. Also, dogs are hiding everywhere and the hornets are a pain to deal with. You can survive there, but it is such a chore.
2. Get to know the basic crafting recipes. It'll save you a bunch of time.
3. Build a stone axe. You can survive along time with just that. It might be tough here and there, but you can do almost anything with it.
4. Contrary to popular belief, DO NOT loot and pick up everything. It will clutter you inventory and make it a pain to sort through early on, which you don't want. Backpacks, napsacks, and any other types of those bags are fine since they will have better chance for food or weapons. What you really should be looking for at the start is an iron pipe. That is when you can get a forge going.
5. Wood is your best friend. It's quick to craft with, very versatile, and plentiful. Yes, even in the desert. And you can upgrade wood frames and wood trunk tips with it.
6. Build a crossbow and some bolts. I left it down here because if your somewhat nimble with your character, then your stone axe is all you need at the beginning.
7. Pick up all types of food and water until you have enough to be picky. If you can make antibiotics, then rotten meat isn't so bad. Food poisoning isn't that bad either if you are clear of zombies. It only last 60 seconds and bottoms out your stamina and some of your hydration. It sounds worse than what it really is.
8. Zombies move slow during the day, so don't try and hightail it away from them all of the time. You will waste your hydration level.
9. This one takes a little practice and courage. If you see a spitter zombieall you do is dodge the acid, then dash right past them. By the time they explode, you should be clear of the blast radius. You could also snipe it once in the head from a good distance and watch it run at you, but not quite make it which then it explodes. They do have good loot btw, but you don't get it if they go boom.
10. If you're in the desert, pick up the yucca plants. One empty jar and those plants can provide you all the nutrients you need to survive. You'll need a lot for hunger, though.
11. Blueberry bushes in the snow biome is just as good as yucca juice, however, it helps your hunger more than you hydration.
12. When building a base or fortifying one you found, use wood trunk tips. You could make a bunch of noise inside to attract zombies, then just keep repairing the walls as they attack your place and kill themselves on the trunk tips.
13. This one is a little cheap. If you have nowhere to run to at night or you are too far away from shelter, you should find a lake to float in until daytime. Zombies can't swim so they will be at the bottom. The spitters might be able to spit at you underwater, but I'm not sure about this. Unfortunately, hornets can attack you underwater.
14. Finally, use the stealth system. You could lure zombies away from your base. You could run around a corner and throw a pipe bomb in the opposite direction. You could even shoot a crossbow bolt at an object to lure the zombies to a more advantageous point. Be creative!

There's loads more I could offer you, but I feel this should be enough to give someone a solid start. This game really is not that hard. I usually build a decent fort within the first day, then I finish it within the next two days. I also play without air drops, and I never seem to find a smg, beaker, chainsaw or auger. I always start a new character whenever I die or get bored with the map, so I have learned how to start up quick and survive for the long haul. Hehe, I usually only die when I blow myself up by accident. Anyway, good luck and I hope this was helpful.

[driamlegion]

nice one

[AsianGirlLover]

You should copy-paste this into a guide. This is some good stuff for new people to read.

[Jazz]

Thank you. This is awesome.

[CrOsS]

Thanks :)

[AgentSmith]

13) If you have the time/resource(say a full stack of logs) build a 4x10 "tower" to stand on. If you're so inclined you can extend the top to include walls but unless hornets come in the middle of the night, you should be fine. You can build a campfire up there in case you need to eat and zombies will generally ignore you rather than pooling under you. In the morning, you can jump off and land safely in the water.

15) Water is your friend. If you have a tall base, make a small pool at the foot so that you can easily jump down without any health risk

16) Wood frames are awesome, keep a few with you at all times. If you find yourself trapped at the top of a building(especially in the hub city), you can attach wood frames to the wall and wind your way down and pickup the frames behind you. You can also use the wood frames as a way into your base and also a helper when constructing so you can reach higher locations without leaving things laying around.

17) Most things are good sources of burnable wood. Extra weapons, chairs, etc.

18) Save space in your inventory. Scrap any/all iron/brass/lead except bullet casing.

This one should just be an asterisk tip..
**Remember that when crafting you can close your inventory and do other things.

[Aydin]

Cool tips! Could anyone explain how to repair weapons?

[Rahxef]

Nice tips, thanks for taking some time to share your experience with others! :)

May I correct you on something by the way? It’s in the number 7 tip. Antibiotics cure infection and dysentery but not food poisoning. But the advice is interesting, all food that may apply Food Poisoning (only lasts 60 seconds) is not that bad like Old Sham Sandwich which replenish 20 on Fullness: 1) There is a chance that the debuff isn’t applied (so only benefits) and 2) with the abundance of bottles and make tons of goldenrod tea, you just wait 60 seconds until food poising ends, then you drink.

[AgentSmith]

Postat inițial de Aydin:

Cool tips! Could anyone explain how to repair weapons?

For tools make metal strips (from iron pipes) and for guns use weapon repair kits. Place the tool/gun in the center of the crafting grid and place the strips or repair kit on the grid as well. Click craft and your item will be repaired.

[Dragorin]

Postat inițial de SoulChaserJ:

13)

18) Save space in your inventory. Scrap any/all iron/brass/lead except bullet casing.

You can quickly fill your inventory with broken down stuff that would have stacked better individually so only break it down if it's a 1 to 1 ratio or 2 to 1 or it doesn't stack to 64.

I did a loot run to a hotel in the central city yesterday and broke all the doors in one building. Walked out with 3 stacks of 64 door knobs. If I had broken them down while looting I'd have had 6 inventory spots taken up instead of 3.

[Dragorin]

Postat inițial de SoulChaserJ:

Postat inițial de Aydin:

Cool tips! Could anyone explain how to repair weapons?

For tools make metal strips (from iron pipes) and for guns use weapon repair kits. Place the tool/gun in the center of the crafting grid and place the strips or repair kit on the grid as well. Click craft and your item will be repaired.

Crossbow can be repaired with sticks and the stone axe can be repaired with stone.

[AgentSmith]

Postat inițial de 0000FF{MOD}FFFFFFDragorin:

Postat inițial de SoulChaserJ:

13)

18) Save space in your inventory. Scrap any/all iron/brass/lead except bullet casing.

You can quickly fill your inventory with broken down stuff that would have stacked better individually so only break it down if it's a 1 to 1 ratio or 2 to 1 or it doesn't stack to 64.

I did a loot run to a hotel in the central city yesterday and broke all the doors in one building. Walked out with 3 stacks of 64 door knobs. If I had broken them down while looting I'd have had 6 inventory spots taken up instead of 3.

Very true. But if you had 18 door knobs 10 trophies and 20 candlesticks it would be well worth it to scrap them all.

[Lerch Addams]

Very well done.

Excellent tips folks!

[Rahxef]

Postat inițial de Aydin:

Cool tips! Could anyone explain how to repair weapons?

Repair weapons (numbers given here are for alpha 9.3):

1) You can repair a crossbow by putting in the crafting grid your crossbow and some sticks (found by destroying bushes or by converting wood logs into planks then into sticks) and the stone axe by putting in the crafting grid your stone axe and some small stone and craft.
It’s not recommended, since making a stone axe only requires one small stone (converted into sharp stone) and crossbow a few sticks (you will need more resources to repair them than to create them from scratch).
You can either put random sticks or stones with your weapon and you should get back what is in excess.
Or you can calculate what you exactly need each time: for example (to see the mechanic), the crossbow has 250 durability and the tip indicates that it needs sticks to be repaired. Each stick repairs an amount of 10 weapon durability (it’s on the tip). So you will never need more than 25 sticks to repair it fully (10 * 25 = 250). If it has, for example, 98 durability left you do this calculation:
[max durability minus durability left = durability points to repair] so 250 – 98 = 152. Since sticks repair 10 durability, you divide the result by 10 and you know that you need 16 (rounded up) sticks to repair it.

2) You can repair tools and some melee weapons (see the tip in each weapon to see what it requires to be repaired) with metal strips (put the tool or melee weapon on the crafting grid with metal strips then craft): 1 Iron Ingot gives 4 Forged Iron which gives 12 Short Iron Pipes which gives 60 Metal Strips.
Each metal strip repairs an amount of 10 durability. Like before, you can put a random number of metal strips with the weapon, and if there is too much, you should get it back (unless there is a bug with certain weapons in particular and excess disappear).
If you want to calculate what you exactly need, you do like before. For example, the Sledgehammer has 250 max durability and since metal strips repair 10 weapon durability, you can calculate exactly as the example mentioned above with the crossbow.

3) You can repair firearms with weapon repair kits (put the firearm and weapon repair kit on the crafting grid, then craft). To make one, you will need oil (found randomly), cloth (found randomly or by combining two cotton flowers in the crafting grid) and metal strips (in the part 2 here you can see what you need to make them). Each weapon repair kit repair 40 weapon durability.
As before, you can put a random number of weapon repair kits and get back the excess if it’s too much or you can do the calculations like before but since it repairs 40 durability, at the end you divide by 40 instead of ten.
For example, you have got a pistol with 15 durability left out 175 max: 175 – 15 = 160. 160 : 40 = 4. You will need exactly 4 weapon repair kits to fully repair it.


Max stack you can have of each repair material:
Sticks and small stones (250); metal strips (64); weapon repair kits (12).

[FlatFoot]

Postat inițial de author:

I usually only die when I blow myself up by accident.

The gas pumps blow up. They are not a good source of scrap iron. Who'd have guessed? :)

[Sandtrail]

Postat inițial de Rahxef:

Nice tips, thanks for taking some time to share your experience with others! :)

May I correct you on something by the way? It’s in the number 7 tip. Antibiotics cure infection and dysentery but not food poisoning. But the advice is interesting, all food that may apply Food Poisoning (only lasts 60 seconds) is not that bad like Old Sham Sandwich which replenish 20 on Fullness: 1) There is a chance that the debuff isn’t applied (so only benefits) and 2) with the abundance of bottles and make tons of goldenrod tea, you just wait 60 seconds until food poising ends, then you drink.

I should have been more elaborate with 7. Antibiotics was directed at rotten meat. Food poisoning was a separate issue but still under food debuffs. Also, I'm not a fan of goldenrod tea. It's just another something to waste my time on when I have more important things to craft. It's a great item, but I wait until I have settled down in my base and I have nothing else to do. I know others swear up and down by it, but I just make a few stacks of jars and boil the water anytime I need a new stack. The only drinks I waste my time on to craft is coffee (sometimes), bottled water, and yucca juice. Hornets are pretty common so I make sure to get some honey which doesn't waste time crafting and it doesn't require an empty jar.