Project Zomboid is a game that is famous for the high degree of freedom it provides to its players. Not only that, the countless possibilities of scenarios present within the game make it that much more enjoyable! Realism and its hardcore survival nature are just some of the attributes that make the game one of the best in its genre. Most players following YouTube content creators who play Project Zomboid cannot help but buy and try the game out for themselves!
However, the game’s challenging nature means you can’t help but get frustrated at times. As such, frequent rage quits at the early stage are often expected! Well, you’re in luck because this article will help you solve your everyday newcomer problems faced in Project Zomboid!
From selecting talents and effective food management to smoking and keeping in check your calorie count, I’ll be talking about it all!
Default Difficulty
The first problem you are bound to encounter comes well before the actual game starts. In a world where most games pick the lowest difficulty as their default setting, Project Zomboid chooses to be a maverick!
Newcomers are going to be unaware of this. The highest possible difficulty setting of the game is entirely unforgiving to new players, and it’s the last thing you’d be expecting. In this case, you’ll probably be eradicated whenever you try to test your skills against a horde of zombies. I was tortured for the first few days of playing when I first bought the game. It wasn’t until after I watched skilled players show their gameplay on YouTube that I realized how the difficulty mechanic of the game works. So, be on the lookout. The game will throw you in with the highest difficulty setting as a default! Ouch, talk about being cruel!
Sandbox Settings
The sandbox mode will allow you to modify your settings according to your liking. This, however, is misleading. Entering into sandbox mode itself doesn’t lower the difficulty of the game. Far from it, actually. The sandbox mode also works on the highest possible difficulty as a preset. This won’t change unless you manually lower the game’s difficulty settings in sandbox mode. Don’t worry; I died about 5 out of 6 times before realizing this as well. But just because I learned the hard way doesn’t mean you have to!
To switch the difficulty mode in the sandbox, open the sandbox presets. Here, you can select the difficulty that you would like from the bottom to the top row. The most significant difficulty is the “cataclysm”, while the lowest one is “Builder”. Once you have adjusted the difficulty to your liking, you can move on to modifying other values present on the left-hand side.
Character Settings
The first one here is character settings. Here, you can adjust the multiplier value of your character’s experience. The newbie pack can also be found here. This contains food and weapons that will be useful for you to survive in the early game. At least my mom doesn’t have to worry about me fighting zombies without weapons anymore!
Free Point Setting
Moving on to the bottom. Here you can find a setting called free points. This will allow you to adjust the number of opening skills points you possess. Increasing this setting will make you stronger, consequently increasing your chances of survival. In other words, it’ll help you become Superman!
Weapon Multi-Hit Setting
Suppose you’re frightened by being surrounded by a group of zombies (let’s be honest, who wouldn’t)? You might want to check out the weapon multi-hit setting. This will allow you to hit multiple zombies with your weapons. Although, note that this requires you to hold weapons in both hands and cannot be used for some of the weapons. If you’re facing a large group of zombies, it’s better to just walk away for now.
Refresh Setting
Lastly, you might want to check out the refresh setting. Clicking on this will show you the refresh times of different items in the game. You can exploit these according to your liking to increase or decrease the refresh rates of specific items. Safe to say, with this setting enabled, living a rich life isn’t just a mere dream anymore!