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Sensible Balance: Player Stats and Timed Actions

December 2024 Note: This is created and tested for Build 41 only, the Build 42 update will come in the future! The mod may still work fine with Build 42 - but use at your own risk!

Consists of two optional mods that:
1. Balance the rate of player stats (hunger, thirst, boredom, unhappiness).
2. Balance the speed of the majority of player timed actions and a few movement actions.

-Running uses a bit more endurance vs vanilla (+20-25%).
-Thirst rate +25% general, and 50% of new rate when asleep (vanilla: 25% of vanilla rate when asleep).
-Hunger rate increased when sleeping (33% of vanilla hunger awake rate). Vanilla sleeping rate: 10.5% of awake rate.
-Fatigue increase rate lowered (vanilla is 11% higher than new rate).
-Boredom increase rate: 80% of vanilla.
-Unhappiness increase: 80% of vanilla.

The hunger and thirst mechanics were majorly balanced in my Sensible Balance: Food and Drink, Nutrition, and Water Weight mod.

Select examples:

Barricade Action: x4 time, 'Handy' trait benefit and vanilla reduction from carpentry skill scaled (-50% time at level 10 still).
Building: x12 time, greater scaling with carpentry skill and Handy.
Car Hood/Mechanics Window: Way, way quicker.
Cigarettes: x3 time to smoke, and can run whilst smoking. If you cancel the action 1/3rd of the way through or later, you will still consume the cigarette but avoid the long animation.
Crafting: 2.5x time.
Cooking Evolved Recipes (right click + add ingredient): Vanilla time, but bonus speed for cooking skill (25% vanilla --> 50% modded at 10 cooking, because I hate waiting to click through these menus).
Cutting Hair: 3x time.
Digging Furrows: 3x, speed is now affected by farming skill. Additional chance of finding worms, scaling with farming and fishing skills.
Digging Graves: Digging x12, filling x6 base time: (honestly digging one takes about 6 hours for a single person in real life. As a "construction" it benefits from carpenting skill, hardcoded behaviour).
Drinking and Eating: Slower and now directly scales with the size/hunger reduction of the item or remaining portion eaten.
Dyeing Hair: x3 time.
First Aid: Bandaging, disinfecting wounds, stitching, etc.: Typically x2 time, vanilla time benefit of first aid skill scaled + slight bonus added.
Mechanics Actions: (e.g. installing/uninstalling parts, fixing parts) 3-5x with larger scaling to mechanics skill. Engine repair even slower.
Harvesting Plants: 2x, now factors in farming skill for speed.
Hotwiring Vehicles: 3x, but significantly faster as mechanical and electrical skills increase.
Painting and Plastering: x4, new reduction from Handy.
Plumbing a Water Source: x8 time, reduced by handy trait.
Removing Bushes: x4 base time at 5 strength and 0 farming, but is greatly reduced by increasing strength and the farming skill.
Removing Grass: x3 base time, greatly reduced by farming skill and somewhat by strength.
Repairing Generator: x6 time, but better scaling with electrical skill, additional scaling with mechanics skill added.
Shoveling Ground (for sandbags, gravel, etc): x3 time.
Sledgehammer Destruction: 10x but with greater scaling to strength.
Tailoring a patch/repairing clothing: 4x time, but large reductions from tailoring proficiency (at level 10: up to as fast as vanilla at level 10).
Unbarricade Action: x2 time, 'Handy' trait benefit and vanilla reduction from carpentry skill scaled (-50% time at level 10 still).
Washing Blood Off of Walls/Floor: x3 time.

As a big fan of the game The Long Dark, I wanted Project Zomboid to give more importance to the resource of time. At the very least, relative safety must be ensured before a lot of the actions can realistically be performed. The majority of timed actions were far too fast, and a select few too slow and tedious. I have considered balancing them with the multiplayer gameplay in mind, so no time increases are "realistic" per se - it does not take days to construct a whole building, but it does not take in-game minutes either.

Player Movement:
I wanted the world to feel less 'paper thin' and I thought the relative speed with which the character is able to traverse fences (run/sprinting over) and climbing walls was too fast. The speed of these actions/animations was decreased by about 20%. It looks really good.

-Update the mod for Build 42 when the time comes.
-Further change the speeds of First Aid actions, as the animation cuts off if it is too long. No first aid actions have been made longer than 2.5x though I really wanted to (e.g. stitching a wound).
-If you were holding a two-handed weapon and run whilst smoking it is kinda obvious the running animation is from a two-handed weapon and the cigarette can be seen slightly floating above the hand. If anyone knows how to edit animations/'blend' them together please let me know.


Mod was coded to the principles outlined in this guide by star to ensure vanilla functions are not overridden, maintaining compatibility with other mods.

Please do not mod-pack or reupload this mod anywhere else, just share the link to this page.
I hope you enjoy this mod.

Workshop ID: 3305666335
Mod ID: sensiblebalancetimedactionsstats
Mod ID: sensiblebalancetimedactionstimed