Attaining skills is an essential part of Project Zomboid in order to have a smooth experience of the game. On that front, there are a ton of skills that the player can pursue and practice. One of the most important and valuable skills in Project Zomboid is tailoring.
The tailoring skill was added later into the game as a part of an update. Due to its relatively new nature, there isn’t a lot of detailed content and information presently available for it on the internet. Today, I will change that!
Due to the limited information, only a handful of players fully understand tailoring in Project Zomboid, and even fewer practice it. I will point out that I myself am always learning new things regarding the game. As such, if you believe that I omitted something significant or had some errors in explaining this skill, feel free to point it out!
Tailoring
Tailoring is an essential skill in Project Zomboid. It enables you to repair and fortify your clothes against enemies by protecting them against scratches, bullets, and bites. Thus, it cements its place as one of the most useful and practice essential skills you can have or even start with.
Why upgrade tailoring?
Before you start working on it, you should understand why you should spend time upgrading the tailoring skill. The clothes that you wear in Project Zomboid are not invincible. They will constantly get damaged and torn, which reduces their defensive and protective capabilities. If a zombie manages to attack you on the exact spot where the cloth got torn from, you will easily get injured. Wearing damaged clothing will make you more susceptible to wounds and injuries. Furthermore, holes in clothes will reduce their warmth element, and if you live to see the winters, you will freeze quite quickly once it snows.
The good news is that you can efficiently scavenge clothes by obtaining them from zombies you have killed. High-grade and rare garments, however, don’t come that easy! The clothes you get from the zombies will already be in a damaged state, and no matter how awesome you look in them, they won’t help you out for long! Additionally, the chances of obtaining rare clothes from zombies are pretty low.
Keeping that in mind, if you have expertise in the tailoring skill, you can patch up your existing clothes to improve their defense. A higher level of tailoring translates to a more significant increase in defensive capabilities and a happier, more protected you!
In order to prepare clothes for yourself, you will require some items. These are mentioned below!
Tailoring Items
- Needles
Needles won’t get damaged no matter how much you use them. They are used in tailoring, and once you pick them up, they can be used forever. This makes them very convenient to use.
- Thread
Thread is an integral part of tailoring, and it is essential to keep a good supply of it with you. It is extensively used in tailoring and crafting. You can occasionally find thread stacked in houses and stores. You also have a slight chance of obtaining it by tearing clothes. A higher level of tailoring increases the burst rate of the thread.
- Scissors
Most of the early game clothes are made of cloth. However, more valuable clothes will be made from denim and leather. These are rare materials and cannot simply be torn by hand. You will need some scissors to work on these. Scissors can commonly be found in school lockers and desks.
- Fabric
After spending some time playing the game, you would have collected tons of ripped sheets. By now, you’d probably know that these can be used as more than just some simple bandages. If you use scissors on thick clothing, you will obtain denim and leather. These materials can be used to patch up your clothes to increase their defense. However, you should note that if a fabric is stained with blood, it must be washed before it can be used.
- Books
Practicing the tailoring skill can be a time-consuming task. Regardless, you can read tailoring skill books to speed up the experience you receive. Finding these books, although, is an arduous task. Libraries, unlike clothing stores, are incredibly scarce. Considering how rare one is, you must take a tailoring book with you whenever and wherever you find it!
Here’s another tip. Needles and thread can also be used to sew up extreme injuries. Always make sure to have extra threads in your inventory, just in case!
Upgrading the Tailor Skill
You have successfully understood the fundamentals of tailoring along with the items you require to start. Now comes the most tedious part of the skill – maintenance.
In order to repair and maintain the defensive integrity of your clothes, you need to perform the following actions. Firstly, open up your inventory and right-click the piece of clothing that you want to interact with. Now, choose the inspect option from the pop-up. This will bring up a new window containing the details of that item of clothing.
Different clothes have different areas that they cover. This window shows you detailed information regarding what areas the clothing will cover. Additionally, it also offers information regarding how much defense would be provided in each area and whether the item is affected by any blood stains or holes.
In order to proceed, make sure you have fabric, thread, and needles available in your inventory. Now, right-click on any of the parts that you want to modify, and select the “Patch” or “Remove Patch” option according to what you want to do. Patching/Un-patching a part of the clothing will give you experience points. Patching an item requires thread; however, as your tailor’s level increases, there is a chance that the previously removed patches will be re-used.
I recommend that, at your discretion, you should take out a piece of clothing and practice tailoring. Equip your tailoring tools and prepare a ton of fabric! For this, you can use scraps of cloth as they are easy to find and hoard. Now, continuously Patch and Un-patch parts of the clothing to gain experience. You can also speed up the game time to do this more effectively!
Keep in mind that not all items can be practiced upon. Some items, including shoes, helmets, firefighting equipment, police, and military undershirts, are unrepairable. Once you run out, they’re gone for good!
Protecting Your Clothing
Patching isn’t the only good thing you can obtain from tailoring. Through this skill, you can also add extra layers of fabric to your clothes. This can provide you with adequate protection against zombie bites and scratches.
Each part of your clothing has a scratch bite protection percentage. Adding extra layers of fabric to the item will increase this percentage and, consequently, improve the protection provided by it. In this section, attributes are listed from lowest to highest according to security. The following level of precedence is followed: Rags – Denim – Leather.
Furthermore, the amount of protection gained is increased for every 2 levels of increase in your tailoring skills. Talk about being useful!
- Rags
Rags will only provide scratch protection and no bite protection. At tailoring level 1, they give a 5% increase in security. In contrast, this percentage is increased to 5% for tailors with a level 10 skill level.
- Denim
Denim is a substantial upgrade as compared to rags. They provide a more significant amount of scratch protection as compared to rags while also providing a small amount of bite protection. In the case of level 10 tailors, Denim effectively provides 10% in the scratch protection department and an additional 5% for protection against bites!
- Leather
Leather is hands down the best material available out of all three. Owing to that, it is pretty scarce. Due to its rarity, I recommend that you should stack up on leather any chance you get and never let an opportunity of receiving it slip by! If your tailoring skill is level 10, leather will provide you with 10% bite protection and a staggering 20% scratch protection. That’s a massive increase as compared to the ones provided by rags and denim!
Additionally, as mentioned earlier, an increase in tailoring levels can help you gain line (P.s This is content I found on the wiki and have not tested myself, so take it with a grain of salt). Once you reach level 8 tailoring skills, you can fully repair any holes in your clothing. This will help in increasing the protection provided by them.
Lastly, keep in mind that not all clothing will be repaired by this method. Some items of clothing have material restrictions imposed on them, which prevent you from being able to fix them.
Conclusion
This was an in-depth analysis of the items you require for tailoring, methods of increasing your tailoring skill, and how to effectively use the tailoring mechanic in Project Zomboid itself. I hope it helped you out, and as always, good luck with your zombie killing endeavors!