Skills
Passives
| Skill Name | Description | best way to level |
|---|---|---|
| Fitness | Affects how long your character can run and do combat for, as well as how quickly they can recover from being exhausted. | The best way to level fitness is by using the fitness tab in the health menu. You can also passively level it by running, cutting down trees, or running around with a heavy load. For detailed fitness training strategies, see our complete fitness guide. |
| Strength | Affects how much your character can carry, the chance to push zombies over, and the base weapon damage for swinging different weapons. | The best way to level strength is by using the fitness tab in the health menu. You can also passively level it by running, cutting down trees, or running around with a heavy load. Higher strength also improves your effectiveness with melee weapons. |
Agility
| Skill Name | Description | best way to level |
|---|---|---|
| Sprinting | This skill affects how fast your character moves around, jogging or sprinting. This includes a sneak jog. | The best way to level this is to simply jog everywhere, and you should see results. Essential for early game survival. |
| Lightfooted | This skill determines how loud your character is running around or sneaking around. | The best way to level is to sneak around zombies. For more stealth strategies, check our detailed lightfooted guide. |
| Nimble | This skill determines how fast your character is in the character’s stance, and how graceful you climb fences. The fast strafing is a real benefit to have, as it makes backing up during combat much more safe and much more risk-free. | The only way to actually level up nimble is to either climb fences or simply walk around while in that combat stance. Critical for melee combat effectiveness. |
| Sneaking | This skill determines how detectable your character actually is. | The best way to level is to sneak around zombies. |
Combat
-Axe -Long Blunt -Short Blunt -Long Blade -Short Blade -Spear -Maintenance
| Skill Name | Description | best way to level |
|---|---|---|
| Weapons | determines how well your character uses different weapons and the chance to hit a zombie | leveling by using the weapon you want to level. For weapon recommendations, see our best melee weapons guide and long blunt weapons analysis. |
| Maintenance | determines how long your weapons will last | leveling by breaking weapons or smashing them. For detailed maintenance strategies, check our maintenance skill guide and weapon repair guide. |
Crafting
| Skill Name | Description | best way to level |
|---|---|---|
| Carpentry | Used to build and defend your base. Higher levels allow you to build better quality walls and furniture. | Disassemble furniture with a hammer and screwdriver. For comprehensive building strategies, see our carpentry guide and quick carpentry leveling tips. |
| Cooking | Allows you to cook meals with rotten food without getting sick. | Forage for insects and cook them. |
| Farming | Allows you to see more information about your crops. | Successfully harvest crops when they’re ready. |
| First Aid | Speeds up the healing process for wounds and makes it so bandages get dirtier slower. | Dig furrows with your hands in the ground. For comprehensive medical knowledge, see our first aid guide and medical supplies overview. |
| Electrical | Allows you to operate generators and use electronic scrap to repair them. | Disassemble every digital item you come across. For electrical skill strategies, see our electrical skill guide. |
| Metalworking | Allows you to create strong walls and furniture. | Dismantle anything that requires a blowtorch. For metalworking strategies, see our metalworking guide. |
| Mechanics | Allows you to change out parts in a car with less of a chance of failure. | Uninstall and reinstall parts in a car. |
| Tailoring | Allows you to patch your clothing and repair rips and tears. | Rip off clothing from zombies and patch it. For comprehensive tailoring strategies, see our tailoring guide. |
Firearm
| Skill Name | Description | best way to level |
|---|---|---|
| Aiming | This skill determines your headshot and normal hit rate range and recoil time. To start off, you’ll probably won’t be able to hit the broad side of a barn so this skill is needed to use more skill-based guns such as pistols or rifles. | The best way to level this is to simply shoot zombies with shotguns. Of course, the shotgun is the loudest variant of a gun but it also does the most amount of damage and it kills the most amount of zombies per shot. The XP is actually calculated off of accumulated overall damage and since shotguns are the highest damaging and easiest to shoot, they’re a really easy way to level up your shooting skill. |
| Reloading | This skill also essentially just determines how fast you can reload your guns. | Leveling this is pretty easy as all you have to do is have a gun and ammo. After that, all you need to do is unload and reload the same gun over and over for XP. |
For comprehensive firearm guides, see our best firearms guide and aiming skill tips.
Survivalist
| Skill Name | Description | best way to level |
|---|---|---|
| Fishing | This skill is used to catch fish and increases the chance to catch more and larger fish. | The best way to level this is to fish around the times of 6 am to 9 am and 6 pm to 9 pm. Catching anything will increase your fishing skill, whether it’s an old pair of shoes or a huge pike. Though catching larger fish does net the more xp you’d actually get. |
| Trapping | This skill is used to set traps and increases the chance that you catch something in your set traps. | The only way you can actually level up the skill is by harvesting your traps with animals in them. |
| Foraging | This skill allows you to find more materials and resources in the woods, such as insects, berries, and mushrooms. The higher skill allows you to find more variety in objects, an example would be being able to find crickets and other insects at level four plus foraging. The cool thing about insects is actually how much hunger they reduce and how they are non-perishable, so this is actually a really good way to prepare for winter without bringing out the butter and ice cream because you can essentially just forage for like a week straight and stockpile hundreds upon hundreds of cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, whatever it takes. | This can be leveled by going into search mode to find and pick up items. |
Related Skill Guides
- Best Occupations and Traits - Choose the right starting skills for your character build
- Best Builds for Beginners - Simplified character builds focusing on essential skills
- First Day Survival Guide - Essential skills and priorities for new survivors
- Keep Skills After Death - Preserve your skill progress with mods and strategies
- Skill Books in Build 42 - Find and use skill books to accelerate learning
