Project Zomboid Time of Day Planner: Don’t Get Bit at Dusk

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Two-Alarm Planner

What “time of day” really is

Daylight is your information budget: sightlines, audio cues, and the ability to pick fights on your terms. Dusk stacks visibility loss, rising fatigue, and rushed decisions. Night isn’t “impossible” — it’s when small mistakes stop being small.

Quick-Start

The Time-of-Day Risk Curve

Pick a block to see what it’s best for, what tends to kill runs, and the one rule that saves them.

Loot Loops (Not Loot Quests)

A loot loop has three parts: an anchor (base/known-safe room), a reach (farthest point you touch today), and a return lane (already-cleared or predictably escapable path). It prevents the classic dusk trap: realizing you’re late and sprinting a gauntlet back through unknown terrain.

The Dusk Trap

Dusk stacks three pressures at once: visibility drops, fatigue sneaks in, and decision quality dips because you’re rushing. One veteran rule carries most runs:

Don’t start any fight after dusk that you wouldn’t start with your eyes half-closed.

Night Ops (Short, Quiet, Reversible)

Build a one-job plan card and keep the rules visible.

Night ops rules

Sleep & Fatigue Triage

Pick how you feel and get a simple “do/avoid” decision.

Seasonal Daylight

Days don’t stay the same length. The fix is to anchor your routine to light, not to a single clock time: keep your turnaround conservative, and if you notice you’re returning in dimmer light, move it earlier.

Sandbox Knobs That Change Nights

Troubleshooting

Search by the problem you’re having. Results match problem, cause, or fix text.

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Problem	Likely cause	Fix that works

The Takeaway

The clock isn’t there to boss you around — it’s there to expose sloppy planning. Treat dusk like a soft enrage phase: you can still win, but every mistake costs more, and the arena suddenly feels smaller.

Action steps recap

Wear a watch. Set turnaround + hard-home alarms. Loot in loops. Do base economy at night. Keep night ops short and controlled.

Patch-History (Collapsible)