More Advice Than A Guide

This is a great game, and it is personal preference that dictates how you play, sniper on the roof, hack and slash down on the streets or even the stealthy only kill when you have to, but for me the draw is the looting, base building and kill to see what they're carrying. I've noticed that now with the beginnings of stats I try harder not to die want to keep those stats going. So I though I would give you some of my insight about surviving in this game.

Overview

The main thing I have discovered is to survive you need food and something liquid, apple juice, soda, coffee, or just good ole water. Of course you must defend yourself form the zombie hoards. Should I use a melee weapon or a gun? There is a cost to using ammunition either finding it or making it, let me tell you it's easier to make it, but you must find the all the ingredients (wood, stone) for gunpowder and brass so if you have to look for the ingredients anyway why not just pick up already made bullets, then there's that storage issue, you can't use all the guns all the time, why collect all the ammo? You may also wish to sleep as the sun goes down, do you need a bed? Or will a tent do. Would you be safer indoors than out? Many question about base building, looting, vehicles, even the zeds, zeros or tall fruity rum drink what ever you want to call them. Some of these zombies almost always carry money. I must say right now that this is my opinion, my experiences, some may help, others may hinder. If I've made mistakes let me know, and if I've helped you even in a small way let me know. Now onward we go!

Food, Water and Sleeping

A lot of this ties together it seems, when you first start out two, three hours in or if you've played hundreds of hours, you still need to eat, so collecting food is something most people do. I know that I still have barrels and lockers stuffed with food and water. If you come across a hot dog cart or a water cooler (you can buy the hot dog cart with cargo tickets) make the room to bring them back, both will completely fill you hunger and thirst meter, I've found that even if all you can do is place it somewhere it's like a pit stop, I've left one at the drive through at the chicken place so when I'm out looting and every place in your inventory counts you don't need to pack as much food. The water cooler is just as handy water takes up a lot of inventory space,they fit nicely at your home or any base that you may frequent, just something to consider. There are a few places that I go to stock up on food and water, the market, almost any store, almost anywhere you walk there could be food and water, some zombies carry food. I've played for a good while and have never seen a deer but I have fished this is the easiest why to get food consistently, but you must watch your back, or go out to the light house island and fish in peace. Pumpkins, bananas, cup cakes, pizza, bread, even the 500 dollar twinkle, Which is the best food? I tend to go with bananas then pumpkins even though pumpkins take more room both help with hunger and thirst. So if I know that I'm going to be on a extended trip I'll take a couple of bananas or if I've got the room a couple pumpkins the key for me is to eat what's on the ground in front of you as you travel. If you go as long as you can,and run out of "ground" food then use the bananas or pumpkins as you need them. Do you need to sleep on a bed inside, or is it safe to sleep anywhere ? I've found that the smaller of the two tents works well inside or out I've never been attacked while I'm sleeping and it only takes up two spaces in your inventory, and in a pinch you can use it as a storage unit 1000 kilos worth. You can actually go on a road trip. I do usually find a house or building to sleep in but I've slept under the stars numerous times. It is easier to play in the light but if you have to there are flashlights, a small mag light and a bigger plastic flashlight.

Weight How Much Can You Carry

So many backpacks so little room Hey after collecting almost every back pack (and actually using them) I've come to the conclusion that if you are just using them for storage and extending your inventory and not trying to collect every back pack, there is five backpacks that are worthy. You can use the Koopa backpack for the cut off, it kind of looks like a turtle shell with spikes It will hold 80 kilos in this one, but there is still five better backpacks (in my opinion) The Expedition pack and the Turtle pack are 100 kilos, the next two, the Nomad and the Paratus both carry 150 kilos. The next backpack Is my choice it's called the Rush pack and it will carry 155 kilos As you might be able to see I've got lots of backpacks I think eventually I'm going to replace them with only Rush back packs. On the small side are what they call pouches, all except the "largest" pouch they only take up one space. the largest one takes up six spots (3 x 2) some really small and some bigger than the smallest backpacks. So after all this backpacking knowledge, it boils down to, with a Rush backpack, a heavy vest and your pockets you can carry 205 kilos. I hate it when you think you've got plenty of room and you try to pick up a circuit board or a piece of pizza and the game says that there is no room for whatever item you're trying to pick up but it's really just the weight sometimes a little bit of shuffling can move enough weight that you can pick the item up. You know you're getting better when you can max out your pockets, heavy vest, and your backpack and make it back to base, then you know you were on a successful looting run.

Looting: Keep It All?

When I first started I lucked out and found a sword right away, a cutlass, this was better the frying pan, it worked fairly well, I guess better than a fishing rod. Not only did I die a number of times trying to collect food, weapons, and fighting to survive. It took a little while to figure out the targeting system, make sure the white dot is on the zombie then swing away. Picking a gun was a bit easier. The nine mm was the most inexpensive bullet to make it was light and small. It killed the banshee and big boy so I still use it. My sword is either the Holy Sword or Cedd's Claymore but I digress, My actual advice on looting would be a simple rule if you have room in your inventory take it back if you like more structure then try this always grab bullets, medicine, food & water and anything electric (batteries, both kinds 9 volt, AA, wire, circuit boards) if you wish to collect wire you need wire cutters. after awhile you will have a stock pile of food, water, ammunition, medicine and stuff to build lights. Then you can look for toys, pool tables, pool balls, pool sticks, foosball game, decorations, pajamas, furniture, plants, flowers, records, record players, all manner of helmets and masks, different armor, hats, the list continues to get bigger, lots of stuff. Money is out there and you can buy toys I'm hoping that you will be able to buy a wider selection of goods later on. Also cargo tickets are valuable you can trade them for water coolers, hot dog stand, neon lights, refrigerator and statues I've found everything you can get for the cargo tickets on the streets, but I keep collecting cargo tickets.We might get more items down the road. This all boils down to keeping what you collect that means storage, backpacks and reinforced containers, if you want you can use the salvage machine to break down the stuff you don't want, and if it won't break down you can delete it with a trash can you can craft.

Base Building Or Where To Stay

Once again I must remind you that I don't know this game all that well. I haven't played multi - player yet, so this is from the single players perspective, and from this perspective I would think there are numerous possible base locations I have three that are my favorites. Let me tell you how I began, I wondered around, died a few times but basically found the hospital and the flower shop key. so as I said while wondering I noticed that most buildings had no doors or window so as soon as I saw the key I knew it had doors that's where my base will be, took a bit to find it but as soon as I did home sweet flower shop. After many hours later I realized that if I died I couldn't get back into the flower shop without that key there were at least three time that I could not recover my body that made the flower shop a liability until I started finding more flower shop keys. I've basically took over the entire block where the church, flower shop, and pet store are. because I've put so much effort into building this base it is one of my three favorites. The next one is on the same block it's a three story building over a store front,it has lots of room. This base started as I began to run out of room in the flower shop. There is lots of room on the 2nd floor. 3rd floor is mostly storage. Then we go to my favorite, the tunnel base. Natural bus barricade. This is just getting started, it also has lots of room. A bit closer look. These are just my starting bases, never really built much it was easier to occupy a building. I like these building and where they are located, not too far to the hospital or the market. There are bigger buildings available just know that when you "set down roots" so to speak you'll lose some of the buildings ability to spawn loot or possibly all of its ability.

Vehicles

This will be sort of short, no I'd say real short I've seen golf carts, loaders, buses, vw's, and some type of car, and I'm not sure I've seen all of them, maybe more to come.

Zombies, Zeds, and Zeros

You guys know as much about killin' zombies as I do, whatever floats your boat. Like I said towards the beginning sniper, slasher, sneaker, and of course survivor, whatever you like. I've seen some stand still and let you walk right up to them and kill them, sometimes run right up to them and before you can swing your weapon they take off running. Up until now we haven't had hordes of zombies where maybe you need a machine gun. I do better on five to six with a sword most will go down with one strike, not all, at the plane crash and at the airport the military zombies in black are a bit tougher to take down. The zombies that run around with their pants down around their ankles usually have decent money on them. I seen some weird stuff like Ma coming back to the flower shop, and a couple of named casualties even some acrobatic zombies!

Summary Last Bit Of B.S.

Well this is it my first guide, maybe I should say advice column and I'm not sure it helped anyone but if it did it was worth it, all I can say is that this game is in a constant state of flux somethings will change, we might never get to do it like this again and I'm sure other things will stay just like they are but the game is expanding I've really enjoyed it can't wait to see what's coming next, just the other day I found a spiked club that I had never seen before so there is still stuff to find so I'll keep looking, looting and collecting. I would love to hear from original players that were here at the beginning to hear how the game has changed already. Thanks for your time and attention.

[PMC-Neoma]

i like to make Forward operating bases in each section of the map inside of the large double door buildings. i have one in each city section so i can resupply without having to go to my main base.

[sysfs]

i prefer hacking

[pgames-food]

nice infos and tunnel base - i never thought of making a base there, (was mostly using the nearby area to gather metal and brass) :)

btw one cool thing you can do in the (current / legacy) version, is to use a large crate or wardrobe, to store small metal crates, and then fill each of those smaller crates with backpacks etc :)

i managed to fully load the topmost container with items (using about 3-4 smaller nested crates) and a few backpacks which are smaller in terms of footprint, can then store the larger footprint ones like rush and nomad backpacks etc, IF the contents inside the larger ones dont weigh more than the smaller footprint backpack. (which is cool since you can essentially stash the larger slots backpack into a smaller space)