Alone in the Woods, a guide to leaving concrete behind

This small guide is intended to list items, issues and methods involved in surviving in the wild with as few contact with towns as possible in Survival Mode

Goal and Content

This guide was written while gathering info for a character in Survival mode. the goal being to stock up on essentials and just go wait the apocalypse out in the woods.
I figured I might as well share what I had and add onto it from the comments, feel free to suggest improvements!

Fair warning: this guide is meant for a group with at least one ranger character as they start with trapping and fishing recipes. it might get updated for everyone later once tested

Content:
-A list of all the equipment needed, from essential to optionnal.
-Clarifications about what non renewable ressources are and what they are for
-and general directions to how to start being the hermit you always wanted to be

Gear

Bare Minimum:
-Cooking pot: 1 per person idealy, up to 16 per campfire
-Ripped Sheet: AMAP (As Much As Possible)
-Saw
-Knife
-Frying Pan and/or Roasting Pan, shouldn't need more than one if playing solo
-Water Bottle
-Sweater
-Tent Pegs: 4
-Tarp

Medical Gear:
-Suture Needle
-Tweezers/Suture Needle Holder

Building Gear:
Essential:
-Pillows
-Nails: AMAP
-Needle
-Sledgehammer
-Garbage Bags: ? (for rain collectors, not tested yet), not needed if near a river/lake

Optional:
-Sheets, 5 per bed + Curtains
-Pillows: 5 per bed
-Ropes: up to 12 per survivors
-Bucket
-Paintbrush
-Special components (Doorknobs, Torches, etc)
-Screwdriver

Farming Gear:
Essential:
-Trowel
-Strawberry Seeds

Optional:
-Watering Can
-Gardening Spray, preferably 2
-Cigarettes: AMAP
-Milk (even rotten): AMAP
-The 6 other types of Seeds
-Shovel
-Empty Sand Bag

Fishing Gear:
Essential:
-Nails/Paperclips: AMAP
-Twine/Fishing Line: AMAP

Optional:
-Fishing Rod

Trapping Gear:
Essential:
-Twine: AMAP

Optional:
-Nails: AMAP

Quality of Life:
-Can Opener
-Antidepressant: AMAP
-Bags, the bigger/more the better
-Tissues: AMAP
-Bath Towels: AMAP
-Axe
-Weapons
-Frying Pan and/or Roasting Pan, shouldn't need more than one if playing solo

The items you will craft yourself:
-Campfire Kit
-Mortar and Pestle
-Stone Axe
-Stone Hammer
-Notched Plank
-Sturdy Sticks
-Crafted Fishing Rod
-Wooden Spear (allows fishing without needing a recipe)

About AMAP Items

- The most important one is Ripped Sheets. It is needed for tools, traps and building Log Walls as well as bandaging your eventual wounds.
as silly as it sounds, these are to be stocked in bulk before anything else. chances are you won't meet a single zombie again if you do things right.
- Nails come second because you will spend a LOT of them in Fishing (can be replaced with Paperclips) and Carpentry just to get a decent level. definitelly the ressource you need the most of as these require you to go in town (yuk!).
- Twine you can't get enough of if you plan on fishing and/or Trapping. It is used to repair Fishing Rods (can be replaced with Fishing Line here), craft Fishing Traps and Stick Traps if you know the recipes. Note that Stick traps are the only ones using easy to find bait (Worms) whereas Trap Crates take farmed goods. Trap Boxes have no interest as they are less effective and more expensive than Trap Crates.
- If you plan on farming, Milk and Cigarettes will allow you to craft remedies for your crops. milk cures mildew, a disease that slows your crop's aging, cigarettes for insects that make your plant consume more water until it drains out, killing the plant
- If your character doesn't have the Outdoorsman Trait you will need bathtowels and tissues. it is not advised because those are rare, go quickly and can't be renewed/dryed but can help if you or your guests can't stand a little rain
- finally, the Antidepressant. If you managed to get Strawberry seeds, you will then have a way to fight sadness. until then, in case you ate some stale food, these will be your salvation. two or three should do but those weight almost nothing and they do allow to eat stale food and speed up the beginning of the game

Quick Walkthrough

Prior recommendations:
-1 survivor with the Herbalist Trait (yet to be tested at low level Foraging)
-Outdoorsman Trait
-Playing Ranger
-A level 4 Carpenter,for rain collectors. only if far from a River/lake

- Once your gear collected and you have a couple water bottles, just head towards the place you wish to Occupy (if it is far from a water source, you will need a lvl4 Carpenter to build Rain Collectors) you should be able to feed yourself off of the berries you find but remember never to eat anything stale as sadness can't be fought well at this point.
- If you play without an Herbalist, you will have to test for poisonous berries, two at a time then wait a couple days. if you don't get sick then you can eat that type of berry safely for the rest of the game.
- You WILL exhaust your character by foraging and the first items you want to craft are the Stone Axe, Stone Hammer and Tent Kit. at this point you want to be as light as possible so I'll assume you have only the items listed, which means you are still pretty vulnerable to injuries and sickness. those can be solved by foraging specific plants but they drop too rarely to just rely on what you don't have yet.
- When you arrive priority goes to clean water, set up a campfire near your Water source. having fences around the fire helps in not stepping itand you really don't want to start a forest fire. craft a notched plank and Sturdy sticks to start the fire and just use your Cooking Pots to boil water.
- Once that point is reached you're pretty much done. you have diverse food and clean water and Zombies shouldn't be a threat. you can start crafting the rest of the tools and eventually build a small shelter/wall.
- I strongly recommend spending a full week on foraging as it will level the skill and give you a good supply of healing herbs as well as dry food that you will critically need when the weather turns.
- When you feel like you have enough of those, you can start building a bigger settlement and plant crops. building a floor with your stocks and somewhere to sleep would allow you to go upstairs and wait out an eventual horde and is really all you need as far as zombie defence goes.
- Here you go. just gather fresh food regularly and your only limit is your stock of ripped sheets and nails!

Endgame Goals

Construction and Defence:
In case never having any zombie reach you is not comfort enough and you want to be able to nap naked with a lit radio wherever you want, building a large perimeter wall around your base allows not only for space to forage, farm, trap and fish but will ensure any noise you make won't reach anyone. I still have to look into tree growth but I'm also pretty sure a large enough area will grow enough trees to be self sufficient in term of firewood, added with high foraging skill looting wood logs

Cooking:
might sound trivial but as mentioned earlier, sadness is a problem out in the woods and cooking is not only a great help with that but also quite complex
you will need at least one of farming, fishing and/or trapping to get different ingredients and get any happyness bonus which makes it more of a long term goal

[avaster]

be alone in the woods if ur stuppid

[Evotrek]

A+ Thanks

[Graun]

Awesomeexplorer, Do you have a guide ?

[TroopieHarold]

CDDA is trash its ui is trash i cant even play!

[Awesomeexplorer]

One last thing, if you don't have a roofed area and just a tent and no towels and/or tissues and don't have the outdoorsman trait, sleeping in a tent will slowly dry you off. You can use sleeping tablets if you need to sleep in the tent to get out of the rain but aren't tired/can't fall asleep if you have any, or it's just tough luck.

[Awesomeexplorer]

Once you're set up, immediately start foraging. you'll want to mix any food you can eat safely into salads using the bowl(s) to keep fed and happy. You can have an extremely tiny amount of unsafe food or water, but you might wanna save your healthiness for finding the color of the poison berry. If you're near a body of water you can spearfish with a wooden spear and fillet the fish with your knife; fish is safe uncooked if you can't wait to cook it in a pot of water or a roasting pan. Once you've dealt with other stuff, you can plant the seeds. You could dig with your hands if you don't have a trowel, but as long as you have enough ripped sheets to keep changing the bandage when it gets dirty you should be fine.

[Awesomeexplorer]

You don't need THIS much in order to be able to make a stable place out of town that can sustain itself, but if you're new to all the mechanics of the wilderness then do follow all of this guide step by step. but if you aren't new, the truly bare minimum is the following: a proper shelter (a tent or a roofed area with some sort of sleepable furniture, you can't sleep outside in bad weather without a tent so it's one or the other), a water container that can boil water (preferably a cooking pot like this guide mentions), a renewable water source (note! you don't need a raincatcher to get rainwater, certain water containers can substitute and it tells you if it can but I still highly reccomend finding a body of water), at least 1-2 bowls, ripped sheets (AMAP), a kitchen/hunting knife and at least 1 packet worth of at least 1 type of seed.

[toothrobber]

thanks for the guide. It has been very helpful.

[Smiley Face Killer]

CDDA is not superior to PZ by a long shot... Also why would you waste your time to comment that on the games guide area?

Apart from the completely useless mY gAmEs SuPeRioR comment Good guide, makes a lot of sense and was an interesting read

[_TheBunnymaster_]

Re: CDDA
Play CDDA for much better granularity. There's simply no comparison right now.
Play PZ for decent granularity (second best 'aint bad) and realtime action.