Character Building and the Louisville Plan

While PZ is a sandbox and can be played however you want, I wanted to provide a solid guide with a plan on how to survive long term while still taking some big risks (with a big payout) to keep the beginning very interesting and challenging. With this guide, we will take a series of risks to set up a long term base on the outskirts of Louisville that should set the player up to either live comfortably, or continue pushing and taking risks - whichever sounds most appealing to you!

Your Character Build

Your character build is going to greatly effect your early game capabilities, and the amount of long term grinding you'll need to do. Since this guide is focused on long term survival, the build is going to have a long term focus, but still have some flexibility for your play style.

Your Profession

In this guide, we're going to pick from the four professions which have the most to offer. I'll mention pros, cons, and baits (bad habits or otherwise unsafe practices) for each one.

Lumberjack

Axeman is a pretty solid trait, only given by lumberjack. It gives a lot of axe experience and a slightly faster axe swing which is very useful. You also get a point in strength, some minor foraging bonuses.
You'll also move faster through trees which is a bait, because you should avoiding moving through trees and bushes when possible. I swear to god trees are more deadly than zombies and will slash your throat like it's a low budget horror movie.

Axes are, in my opinion, the best weapons. The top weapons in any weapon class is viable, but hand axes are numerous and make great backup weapons. Axes also deal significant door damage, are easy to repair with wood glue, and have high crit damage and decent range.

Fire Officer

This lesser lumberjack loses the axeman trait and trades it for a small fitness and sprinting bonus. Though not as strong, Fire Officer is a really solid middle ground pick and having a bonus to both fitness and strength will give you a little extra breathing room for nearly every aspect of PZ.

Police Officer

Although arguably one of the best professions, I have never been a huge fan of this. Any character can take a sawed off shotgun and level aiming with ease. The real bonus here is the extra point in nimble, which is extremely time consuming to level up. Another small bonus is the chance to find ammo while foraging and looting. If you're that anxious to go out and shoot things this might be the pick for you, but personally I find the strength and fitness bonuses more valuable.

Burglar

Burglars start with a whopping plus 2 to nimble which is considerable on its own. They can also hotwire vehicles from the start which is extremely convenient, but definitely not game breaking.
I mostly consider burglar when playing with a friend to speed up the pace of the game and give some added convenience at the start. The big drawback here is that it costs 6 trait points which is kind of expensive for the convenience of hotwiring. And since nimble falls off and becomes redundant after level 4 the benefits of burglar are very much only in the early game, making it the worst choice out of these four for long term survival. The sneak bonus is also a bit of a bait. While sneaking can be useful at times and definitely has its place, dead zombies are infinitely safer than a currently oblivious group of zombies that might turn around and spot you anyway.

The Complete Build

If you want to skip the detailed explanations and just use a suggested build, here it is:

Negatives	Positives
Very Underweight	Speed Demon
Weak	Cat's Eyes
Out of Shape	Outdoorsman
Thin-Skinned	Wakeful
Slow Healer	Graceful
Prone to Illness	Amateur Mechanic
Smoker	Gymnast
Unlucky	Brawler
Weak Stomach	Fast Learner
Short Sighted	Keen Hearing
	Organized
	Handy

With this build, Lumberjack and Fire Officer will have 4 extra points. Police Officer will break even and Burglar will still need to make up 2 points somewhere. Since Burglar's have a bonus to lightfoot which essentially does the same thing graceful does, I would recommend losing graceful and picking up another 2 pointed to break even.

Negative Traits

For traits I tend to lump them into four categories, two for negatives and two for positives. Picking negative traits gives you more points to pick positive traits and build up your character. While most of this is pretty subjective, a lot of the PZ community has ultimately decided on some specific metas and the overall usefulness of most traits. I'll try to provide both arguments for informations' sake.

Negatives: The Free Points

Prone to Illness (+4) The biggest drawback from this is catching a cold more easily and faster rate of zombification. If you're turning, you're already dead and any further argument is moot. Colds aren't a big deal, just use some common sense and don't let your character freeze or be soaking wet all the time. Free points.

Weak Stomach (+3) This will kill you if you eat poison berries or eat burnt or spoiled food. So... don't. Free points.

Smoker (+4) This is basically a positive trait disguised as a negative. It caps your stress at 2, provides a means for free stress relief, all without taking up any real weight in your inventory. Loot one gas station and you'll have enough cigarettes to last you the rest of the game. Absolutely free poitns.

Short Sighted (+2) Your search radius for foraging is smaller, unless you wear glasses. I don't bother foraging much anyway, but you can literally pick glasses at character creation (reading or regular) and never worry about it again. Free points.

Slow Healer (+6) Okay this one is a bit more debatable. But honestly I've fallen off of many a rooftop to survive with only the tiniest sliver of health and I'll still be back to 100% by the time I wake up the next day. In my opinion, if you don't die outright from something, you'll probably be fine with a little bit of caution and common sense so... free points.

Unlucky (+4) Because of the way this works, it hardly effects anything. See Organized for more details. Free points.

Negatives: Risk it for the biscuit

These are the negative perks which will impact your game a lot more, but in my opinion are worth it because it's not the early game we're worried about (which will be hard regardless) it's about reducing the grind late game and for that, we need more trait points.

Very Underweight (+10), Weak (+10), Out of Shape (+6) I've lumped these together because these effect your 3 passive stats: Weight, Strength, and Fitness.
These will turn your character into a wet noodle at the start. You won't be able to jump a fence, you'll tire quickly after fighting Z's, and will struggle to carry even a cuppa. The key here is not letting your strength or fitness actually fall to 0 (hence out of shape and not unfit). Doing so will ensure that you DO NOT receive any experience bonus to your passive stats. If you receive a bonus to any skill at the start of the game from your profession or traits, you will receive an experience gain for that skill. (The wiki actually has some conflicting information here. To be honest I'm not 100% sure now, but the UI shows that you will get an experience bonus).
If you are picking Burglar or Police Officer you can take Unfit instead of Out of Shape for 4 more points.

*Overweight players. Some people argue that overweight is better than very underweight. I disagree. It is very easy to gain weight by just roleplaying as Kirby and sucking up anything edible within sight. Doing so will also give you a consistent "Full to Bursting" buff. That gives you more strength, a bonus of 2 to your carry capacity, and you'll heal faster. Plus, you don't have to really consider what to eat because you're eating everything.
Overweight players will either have to be very picky with their foods, only eating low calorie vegetables. They'll also risk going hungry more often resulting in a debuff to strength, carry capacity, healing, and body heat which isn't very important since we start in the summer and will lose the weight long before winter. So, overall, it comes down to whether or not you want to have a buff or a debuff while you reach the target weight of 75-85. It's generally agreed upon that having a buff is more beneficial.

Thin-Skinned (+8) Thin skinned is pretty iffy. Just like it states, you will get hurt more. Scratched more, cut more, bit more, by trees and zombies.
IF you put yourself in a position to be scratched, cut, or bit. It may be easier said than done but... don't do that. You want to survive. Being bit =/= surviving. Don't take unnecessary risks, be vigilant, and this is free points. If you're still learning the combat well... this might be one that you do skip.

Negatives: The Forgotten Category

I changed my mind. I've got 3 categories for each. Just as I've titled this the forgotten category, forget these traits because they're straight garbage.

All Thumbs, Conspicuous, Agora/Claustrophobic, Pacifist, Asthmatic (BIG NO ON ASTHMATIC) Fear of Blood, Restless Sleeper, Illiterate. All of these are awful and I'm not even going to go into why. I would only pick these if you're into some kind of roleplay... otherwise just take my word for it please.

Slow Reader, High Thirst. I see people suggest these often on Reddit. And while I suppose they do make some valid points while suggesting these, I want to state that behind my monitor I am doing the most massively exaggerated eye-roll known to mankind.
Slow Reader. People suggest this because you can speed up time in single player. Even while speeding up time, it takes nearly a full day to read a book. And you only get a meager 2 points for this so, idk, it's your time you decide.

High Thirst. I truly don't know why anybody picks this. You can get by on one water bottle a day. A full water bottle weights .8kg in PZ. With High Thirst you'll need to either carry around 2, wasting an additional .8 kg or waste time doing some inventory management putting the empty bottle in your backpack and taking out the full one, or stopping to find somewhere to fill your water bottle up halfway through the day, every day. With my recommended build you should have more than enough points anyways and this is just way to bleh for me to every consider it.
Also, to put it in perspective, you'll only be able to carry like 8kg at the start so this is literally taking away another 10% of your weight capacity for the majority of your day.

**Ninjapilot10 brought an interesting argument to my attention about high thirst.
"i disagree with your take on high thirst bourbon bottles carry 12.5 units of water and only weigh .7 and beer bottles carry 6.25 units and only weigh .4 and with both of those you cover high thirst while only using 1.1 weight instead of 1.6 for two water bottles"

Positive Traits

So I realized I wanted to divide these into 3 categories as well. The must-haves, the highly recommended, and the basically useless. Likewise I'll try to provide the opposing arguments even for the ones I disagree with.

The Must-Haves

Speed Demon (-1) I'll get a lot of hate for this because the Sunday Driver club is perplexingly large. But with Sunday driver, you will be incapable of driving off road or through Z's. You will be incapable of towing anything. That's a lot of risk and incapabilities. Instead, pick Speed Demon and play smarter. Tap W or use cruise control. Put in hearing protection before putting it in reverse. You'll be fine.

But really this just gives you more options should you find yourself in a bad spot. If the road is covered and you need to go in the grass, you can. If you do happen to back yourself into a corner and get swarmed, this will let you barrel through the horde and get out. You might have to actually get out and run but Speed Demon gives you a chance and gives you options in bad scenarios. Sunday Drivers are just people who don't have enough brain cells to realize they can let go of the W key.

Wakeful (-2) It's 2 points and gives you more playing time. You'll require 6 hours of sleep instead of 8, generally. I like to utilize my extra time by reading a bit before bed or maybe practicing tailoring. Organizing storage. Fishing. Possibilities are endless. And the alternative is staring at a black screen with a ticking clock for an extra 10 seconds every hour.

Gymnast (-5) It's the only trait that gives a bonus to nimble. It's invaluable. Plus, it costs 5 points when almost everything else in the game costs or gives an even number so it couples well with Speed Demon. Just do it, the maths don't lie friendo.

Fast Learner (-6) Solid 30% extra exp for all skills except the passives (strength and fitness).
You gotta get it. If you're thinking you'll just grind out skills more, you're missing the point. This lets you do everything faster, sooner, better. The longer it takes you to finish a base, the more time you spend in danger, the more you have to stop to scavenge for food at water, the more risk you put yourself in. Taking this will translate into building walls sooner, building rain collectors sooner, catching fish sooner, more maintenance experience so your weapons don't break, more nimble experience so you have better fighting capabilities. I often take this with Handy and have carpentry at 5 before I even get to my usual base spot. Extremely helpful.

Keen Hearing (-6) I don't think keen hearing actually has anything to do with sound. What it does do is more than double the distance that you can see behind you. I haven't played without it for a long time, but I reckon I have about 3 seconds to react to zombies walking up from directly behind me. Without keen hearing, I'd say it's closer to 1 second. Remember when I said Thin-skinned is worth it because you can just not get bit? Why would anyone pass this up when it helps you not get bit? The name of the game is PROJECT DON'T GET BIT GIT GUD. So even if you don't git gud, having that valuable extra time to react and make decisions will surely make you feel like you've done a bit of gud gittin'

The Highly Recommended

Cat's Eyes (-2) What can I say even with this trait the dark still terrifies me. Without it I probably wouldn't even play.

Graceful (-4) It's a swan. A beautiful swan. Pick it. Your character will make less noise while moving which is nice, but it also lowers the chances if tripping, falling over a fence, falling from zombies lunging, falling after bumping into a wall or zombie. Be like the swan, be graceful.

Amateur Mechanic (-5) This will let you work on standard and heavy duty vehicles without reading the magazines. Plus, mechanics is extremely slow to level up. Since we want to get at least 2 mechanics early on for hotwiring, this is a very valuable trait.

Brawler (-6) +1 Axe and +1 long blunt. Extra weapon experience. Since you'll already (likely) have axe points from Fire Officer or Lumberjack, this will just make your axe skills shoot up even more quickly.

Organized (-6) I love this. Organized makes EVERY storage container bigger. That includes the seats in your vehicle. And, since EVERY storage container is bigger... they have more loot. Organized is actually a much more effective Lucky. Lucky and Unlucky are virtually insignificant because they don't add or subtract 10% directly, they modify individual % chances to spawn by +/- 10% and since some objects, like sledgehammers, can have a .001% chance to spawn, a .0011 or .0009% chance is not going to make a noticeable difference. (Am I mathing right?) Organized on the other hand, can potentially give items another chance to spawn by increasing the overall storage. So while a sledgehammer might have just 1 chance to spawn in any given wooden crate, it now has 2 due to the increased storage resulting in a much better chance of finding one overall (that's just an example for explanation not literal).

Handy (-8) This is expensive, but it's the only trait that gives maintenance (Mx) experience. Mx effects your repair ability but it also effects the chance for your weapons to take damage. Less damage to weapons = more zombie killing = safer environment. It also means you'll spend less time trying to find or replace weapons, and won't have to loot them as frequently allowing you to prioritize other things.
It also helps you build faster and gives a carpentry bonus. If it wasn't so expensive to take, I would put it in the Must-Haves section.

Outdoorsman (-2) Outdoorsman is great because it negates pretty much any chance of catching a cold, counteracting prone to illness for only 2 points. It also lowers weather effects so you won't be completely drenched when it rains, AND greatly lowers the chance that you'll get your throat slit by a tree. I always find room for this, especially because I arbor (get it) great hatred for trees.
No seriously... nothing will you piss you off more in this world than losing a 3 month survivor with just under 10k kills like running into a tree and dying from blood loss before you can bandage your lacerated jugular. Watch out for trees.

A few other notables, maybe not highly recommended but slightly recommended are:

Dextrous (-2) if you've got the points to spare this is a decent time saver. Not really noticeable for individual items but fractions of seconds added up over the span of your characters life probably makes a difference.

Fast Reader (-2) Another good time saver. Again the "just speed the game up club" are struggling to keep their glasses on their noses right now. It's not like you won't speed the game up to skip reading with this trait, but you'll at least still have time in the day to get back to whatever you were doing before you stopped to read the book. Books are for xp gains, the quicker you read them, the quicker you get back to gaining xp.

Inconspicuous (-4) I swear zombies might as well be mannequins with this. This trait actually frustrates me sometimes because I'm trying to draw zombies to kill and they just walk right by me instead. Beneficial for stealthy ninja players, but shouldn't be a priority.

Positive Traits Cont.

The Basically Useless

Baseball Player - This is just a wish.com version of brawler. Axes are better anyway, so you might as well spend 6 for Brawler AKA BoGo 1/2 off.

First Aider - DON'T GET BIT GIT GUD

Angler, Gardener, Runner, Sewer, Cook, Former Scout, Herbalist, Hiker, Hunter
All meh for various reasons. Either these skills already level up quickly (like farming), don't need to be leveled up quickly, or at all (like cooking), or simply cost way too much for the benefit.

Low Thirst (-6) Another one that I see suggested and highly disagree with. At normal thirst, you'll go through a bottle of water in a day and might get a little thirsty towards the very end of the day. That's perfect. In my opinion that little moodle popping up is just a reminder to fill my water bottle, an added bonus, because you don't receive any debuffs until the second level of thirst.
With low thirst, if you fill your water bottle up at the start of the day it will last until the next morning. If you forget to fill it, it'll likely empty just after you've left for the day meaning you've got to take some extra time to find water or suffer a debuff. Plus 6 points man? that's expensive. I'll take my free reminder over something that actually screws up the flow of gameplay more often than not.

Brave (-4) Brave does have its merits, I suppose. Brave works best when facing small groups of zombies early on. My issue with brave is that facing small groups at a time is a good way to waste time. Panic reduces your damage and critical hit chance, but brave will not make the slightest difference even when you're facing down a small horde of ~50
Most veteran PZ players will tell you, the best way to make sure you survive is to make sure the Z's don't. Find a large area, honk or turn on your sirens, throw a molotov and walk in circles. Or take some beta blockers and use up that shotgun ammo. But, the longer you survive the more desensitized your character will become (up to 150 days) which makes brave useless in my opinion. Save the 4 points and carry some beta blockers instead.

Light Eater (-4) You'll end up needing to eat more than the moodles suggest anyway to keep your calories and weight up, so I kind of feel like this is wasted points. The only benefit is on longer expeditions to keep the hungry debuffs off. I'd actually chalk this one up to personal preference rather than say it's useless.

The Game Plan

I think this spot in Louisville is the most secure and beneficial spot and I go here (almost) immediately every play through.
https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12045x2116x2290
So, this is my method of getting there with a solid 27% survival rate.

Before we start, there are a few key suggestions I'd like to make. First are some important items that you should look to pick up at the start of every game. Digital watches (If encumbered, dismantle and drop the scrap), cigs, matches, and lighter(s), a water bottle, a hammer (preferably ball-peen, if not just normal for building), a screwdriver, a saw (not garden saw, the one that looks like a hacksaw) and a can opener. Other notable items that you will absolutely want to keep if you can are nails, wood glue, duct tape, and a wrench.
Second, just about every location I mention ahead has a TV. Forget the 6 o' clock cooking show. You have the rest of your life (get it) to practice cooking. What we absolutely do not want to miss is the 12 o' clock carpentry show. Moving forward, you should prioritize getting to a TV and making it safe before noon for each location. The 1800 or 6pm survival show is very useful as well, but not a priority. If you can manage to catch a fishing one it will save you a little bit of a headache down the road but otherwise don't worry about it, it's a luxury not a necessity.
Note that the very first day we won't be sticking around to watch TV.

Now, it does take me 2-4 days to get to Louisville but I have a pretty solid plan for it. I start in Westpoint, and immediately walk down to Twiggy's bar and start screaming. Note - walk, not run, save your stamina. For the screaming. Once I get the following horde all arounded up at Twiggy's I pull them up to the gun store, then run around it and go back down to Twiggy's and stealth my way to the Megamart parking lot to hopefully find a car, or at least siphon some gas from one of the vehicles in the parking lot. The horde should get lost behind Twiggy's but you gotta be quick because they will disperse and come your way eventually.

Inside the megamart you should be able to find a weapon if you haven't yet, inhale a bunch of stuff since we're underweight, and if it's late it's pretty safe to clear it out and sleep upstairs in the office, though it'll be dangerous coming back out in the morning. Hopefully your vehicle is ready, if not take whatever gas you could siphon and either go back to a potential vehicle or walk down to the gas station, or towards the tire store. At this point you've basically just gotta cross your fingers and hope for the best that you can find something with the keys in it or on the ground nearby. If you can't you might just be screwed and half to start over. There's a church just northwest of the megamart that could potentially have a vehicle too.

If you haven't been able to find a vehicle or weapon at this point, it's going to be very dangerous going forward. If you are intent on surviving, the best bet is to walk completely across town and keep heading North until you reach this trio of houses. There are more than a few sheds along the way which should hold a weapon. It's also a long enough walk that you should be able to lose most zombies and find a way inside one of those houses without incident. Exhaustion is going to be your worst enemy at this point. But this area should give you a chance to recoup, should have enough food to last the first week if you decide to stay and watch TV.
https://map.projectzomboid.com/#10151x6654x1189
This is just a contingency plan though so if you do decide to take this route, I'm not going to cover it anymore.

Our next stop is the gas station on the way to Louisville.
https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12738x5059x1427
If you were making good time before in Westpoint and didn't sleep, this will be the best place to end your first night. The liquor store is a bit more secure in my opinion. But our main goal here is to rest, gas up, and gather bourbon for molotovs, maybe some more snacks or weapons if we come across them. You do want to stay quiet here because there are quite a few Z's on the other side of that fence in the trailer park. So once you've done all that with a good night's rest, our next stop is the Louisville checkpoint.

When you come up to the piled up cars on the road, swing around them and use the pick up/place function to move the cones and roadblocks and get in. Once you get into the check point you'll want to go on foot to clear it out first. I usually shout a bit at the entrance to pull most of the camp to me. I wouldn't recommend honking because you'll likely pull from the "refugee camp" on the other side of the checkpoint which might be too much to handle. Again, we have a specific goal here.
First we want to find one of the camo army backpacks or at least the solid green large backpack. At the very worst, you should be able to find a big hiking bag. We're going to loot these two specific places in red for shotguns and shotgun shells only. If you have a fireaxe, it's probably worth it to break down the shed door next to the tent that I've circled and loot that as well (For shells only!). Second, I recommend picking up at least a couple of these green plastic boxes for storage when we get to the Louisville house. Or just throw everything on the ground like an animal. I guess it's up to you. Finally, we'll rest at the trailer house because tomorrow is going to be a solid day of killing.

Note - If you do have space because you managed to get a van or truck, it is also worth it to grab at least one generator, but not a priority right now.

Next, we have the most exciting part and honestly probably the climax of the run. The Day of Ascension/Reckoning/Judgement/Enlightenment. Sometimes I call it the Giving Day because it's time to give these ♥♥♥♥♥♥' Z's some wot for and a tally ho chap. Sometimes I call it Moving Day because it's time to move into my forever home *heart heart cat emojis sunglasses emoji and five 'merica flag emojis*

So the way I remember it is to just stick left. As you leave the check point, take your first left. The road will continuously curve back to the right like 2 or 3 times, and you'll just take the next left. Stay on the asphalt, don't take the gray concrete roads. You'll know you're there when you go passed the last house and see the gas station, distillery, and parking lot with a tiny strip mall.

You'll want to leave everything in your vehicle, probably even your clothes, with the exception of a sawed off shotgun, at least 8 boxes of shotgun shells, a molotov, a lighter, and any extra decent melee weapons you can carry. Oh and also a snack, this is probably going to be a long fight.


SPECIAL NOTE: THIS IS NOT A PENIS THAT WAS UNINTENTIONAL

Go ahead and give the horn some solid honks to draw the crowd and start the party.
Personally, I try not to throw a molotov here because I don't want to risk all the hard work I did getting here just to burn down the house or gas station. But sometimes there are simply too many zombies to chance it and you have to. If that's the case, the distillery is pretty useless and the fire shouldn't spread past it so take the pink contingency route if you do need to throw one and need more space. Otherwise just ... start rounding em up and blasting.

After the massacre you should be relatively safe. I spend the rest of week 1 inhaling ice cream from the gas station, watching carpentry, and walking the perimeter to kill anything pulled in by meta events. I usually don't stray too far until after the helicopter event, which may require some additional running or killing.

Helicopter and Post-Helicopter Plan

Now the helicopter can be tricky because this is still Louisville with an IRL population of over 600k. Hopefully it won't pull too much but if it does, you have a few options.

1. If you still have enough ammo left over, just have a repeat of Unity Day and unite these unwanted guests with their twice dead counterparts.

2. If you must, you can always use another molotov and wait for them to burn.

3. Remember all that loot you left at the checkpoint? If you get stuck with the helicopter following you, hop in your vehicle and take your sweet time going back there. Make sure when the helicopter stops you're still a ways away from the checkpoint and also have an alternate route back home. Your shooting skill should be high enough now that you can make use of the M14s and .308 ammo, so go pick all that up along with any M16s, .556, left over generators, containers, or propane tanks you wish to grab.

Once the helicopter event is over, you are truly in the clear. Before building any walls I like to go down to the LSU library and loot all the necessary books and magazines. You don't have to do it all at once but it does make it easier. The most important ones to grab and the bare minimum are the carpentry series, metalworking series, how to use generators, metalworking magazines, fishing 1+2, electronics 1, and at least mechanics 1 if not the whole series.

Now that you've got the books, the next step is finding nails and fingers crossed, a wood axe. If you follow the road east, you'll run into a warehouse. It'll bend south for a bit and then continue east and you'll just run into warehouse after warehouse and storage places. You'll want to gather about 6 or 7 boxes of nails at least (more doesn't hurt) and if you can't find a wood axe, than a hand axe or fire axe will do but be forewarned, it will take quite a bit longer. Mostly, we just need to ensure we can cut down 1 tree for a tree branch to start. From there we can create a loop in making stone axes.

When you've got all of those, read a book and get to work! I like chop down just about every tree on either side of the house, carry the logs into position, and then saw them into planks. I will do all of the sawing and framing first to push my carpentry up so I can build the pretty walls. Any time you hit an even number (i.e. lvl 2, 4, 6) be sure to read the next book before doing any work. Also build stairs and a rain barrel. If you start running out of food, take a tree branch and make a spear. It will take all day at lower levels to catch fish but it's an infinite, high calorie food supply. If you couldn't find a wood axe, same deal. Tree branch, forage the cracked roads for a sharp rock, and rip up a Z's clothes for ripped sheets to make a stone axe. You will likely have to build a brand new stone axe every time you chop down a tree, which sucks, but will push your maintenance, axe, and strength skills up. If you need door hinges and handles, disassemble doors from the nearby houses. Likewise, if you need more nails you can always supplement your supply by disassembling furniture. There are also several sinks, tables, and counters in the immediate vicinity so pick the style you like to plumb under your water supply.

Once you've got walls and water, the game is yours! Go on and live your best, lonely life. If you're not sure what else to do, some meaningful goals are:
- disassemble your massive watch collection, and take out and put back the headlights and radio on every vehicle you can find (at 1 electronics and 2 mechanics you can hotwire vehicles)
- Find a nice vehicle with high engine quality and fix it up. Emergency service vehicles almost always have very high engine quality. (Not condition, which can be repaired, but quality which is set and unchangeable. Click the engine in vehicle inspection mode to see it).
- Find some barbells or dumbbells and get swole.
- Create outposts throughout the city or explore the rest of Kentucky. Roooaaaadd trriiiiiiippppp.
- Raid the gun stores and police stations and just cause some general mayhem by shooting everything that moves.
- Start a vehicle collection. Get one of every color. Get two of every color. Get one of every type of vehicle but only if it's green. The world is your oyster.
- Peruse the LSU library and study etymology in attempts to find out the meaning and origin of "The world is your oyster" Because why oysters? Those tasty lil things are incapable of doing like, anything, besides existing.
- Develop a bond with oysters because like oysters, in this empty, dead, and lonely world you are simply existing. Life is over.
- Drink bleach.

When I started typing this I was actually on reddit. Kind of baffled by the fact that people were still posting asking for help, saying they couldn't survive more than a few days. So I started typing and quickly realized... nobody is going to read this wall of text as a comment. This is something I would have liked to have written a long time ago but felt nobody had a need for it. So, I won't throw any usernames out there but to the handful of people that had asked for help recently, you inspired me to at least attempt writing something helpful. Hopefully it's helpful. I had no idea I was going to type so much. So also thank you to anyone who stayed to read and I welcome any additional tidbits, pro tips, or critiques.

[Fx3.髭男]

@Ninja quality arguments across all points. My thing/experience with cowardly is that even with small fights it can impact you hard early game, and it becomes a bit of a gamble whether or not you find beta blockers early enough.

Fast reader - solid point. I have had some lucky starts where I find carpentry 1 or 2 in the starting house and end up at like carpentry 6 after only two shows.

I am intrigued by your defense for high thirst though. I have to admit I never thought about using anything other than water bottles for water. In fact, I'm so picky I won't even use the orange soda bottles lol. I will have to revisit that.

[Ninjapilot10]

was mostly reading this for your takes on traits, but i have a few things i wanted to talk about.
first you didn't mention cowardly which is in my opinion free points because you can just take beta blockers before any bigger fights.
second is fast reader, i actually agree with your take that it's good but i'd also point out the fact that because life and living only plays during the first week fast reader lets you read more books and therefor save a lot more time when it comes to learning skills because of the extra exp.
i disagree with your take on high thirst bourbon bottles carry 12.5 units of water and only weigh .7 and beer bottles carry 6.25 units and only weigh .4 and with both of those you cover high thirst while only using 1.1 weight instead of 1.6 for two water bottles, still not great if you're only able to carry 8 weight but better, and possibly worth 6 points since you could take feeble instead of weak and get 2 points out of it
other than that i really like this guide.

[JerryJam]

based

[Jesus Christ of Nazareth]

W guide

[kgannon1]

love for that man