Zomboid build 42 released today and i decided to give it a try. My character is Darren Floyd. He's a young 20 something Night Guard for the Knoxville Mall. I spawned in a house and made my way into town on foot, eventually making it to the Gas Station in the screenshot. I ended up clearing it out and making my base in there.
I also went down to the Basement of the Gas Station and checked it out. I found a lead pipe down there i took to replace my Baseball Bat and then sat on the stairs eating canned peaches.
The game added a ton of Ambience which i love as it adds to the feel of the game. There's wind wipping around and i'm pretty sure zombies make ambient noises. Doors swing open and the lighting has been expertly redone. While exploring the gas station i had to go into a dark hallway and used a lighter to see.
The way the lighter lit up the area raised tensions in an exciting way, as i didn't know what was down the hallway. For all i know there could be 10 zombies and i'd only be able to tell when i got close. Luckily there was only one though.
After taking him out back using the new dragging mechanic, i buried him and took his ID. I've started keeping a collection of IDs. I feel like it's something Darren would do to try and cope with it. After that though it crashed, which is to be expected for an Unstable build. So i ended up stopping there.
Zomboid is really, really tough.
First off, I want you to know that you can customize the game rules, and I'd honestly suggest doing so. I often describe Zomboid as a toolkit for building your own zombie movie. You can change how long it's been since the "event", how the infection spreads, how it works, whether survivors have immunity, how long it is before power and water shut off, the spawn chance of different item categories. It's extremely flexible. Don't be afraid to treat it as a toolkit. Make the game that's fun for you.
In terms of actually playing Zomboid, it's a stealth game first and foremost. You must evade zombies wherever possible. Stay low, avoid noise, avoid lights. Close curtains to about being seen from outside. If there aren't curtains, make them from bed sheets. Don't break windows unless you have to (and if you have to, remember to clear off the shards of glass in the frame or you'll cut yourself climbing through).
If you have to fight, keep moving. You want to string the zombies out then hit a few, then string them out again. But extended fights will kill you as fatigue and panic set in. Remember that if you play by the default rules any scratch from a zombie has a 25% chance to zombify you, any bite is 100%. Zombie virus under default rules is a death sentence. Personally, I turned that off, went with the "Any survivor by now is probably immune" logic.
Your immediate goals are always a good backpack (backpacks reduce the weight of their contents, but that reduction depends on their quality), a good melee weapon, food and bandages. You can make bandages from torn up clothing, and with a pot of water you can boil them to sterilize them. This helps avoid infection.
Longer term, a big goal is to get your skills up. You want books for the big multipliers they give, and watching the right TV shows will give certain skills a huge boost. There are also certain things that you simply cannot do if you haven't either read about them or started with the right character, like maintaining cars or hooking up generators.
The golden rule of Zomboid is that whenever you find yourself thinking "Surely they didn't bother putting that in the game," well, they did. You have to really start thinking about what you would actually do in these situations if it was real life. If you could do something in real life, you can probably do it in the game. If something would be dangerous in real life, it's probably dangerous in the game. Don't drink stagnant water without boiling it. Don't eat food without cooking it. Etc, etc. (Yes, that includes the time my wife tried to make a can of WD40 and a lighter into a flamethrower and immediately exploded). It's less of a zombie game and more of a survival sim with zombies (seriously, once you get the hang of this game you will spend way too much time thinking about the value of potatoes).
Wow thank you for the detailed type up! I'll have to give this a shot.
I support the idea of changing the game's rules. It's one of the first things i do. It definitely is up to player's preference but i like playing it much more like a sandbox survival game then how normally difficult it is. Usually i'll lower the zombie count and that's enough for me though