tronic44's Guide to Survival

[tronic44 3,628]

 

Welcome survivors! Here I'll be posting helpful tips on the game that should, hopefully, make your lives easier when surviving. I'll go through everything from bases, to crafting, to farming and much more.
I can see this being played a lot especially as they're adding content as we go, not entirely sure how long it'll be till the console version is like the PC version but hopefully not long.

WARNING: I go into a bit of depth in some places, so if you wanted to find things out for yourself and keep things a mystery, i probably wouldn't read this.

Surviving Your First 6 Nights:

Spoiler

 

When starting out the game you'll notice in the top right hand corner of the screen there will be some objectives to complete, these are important because not only do you get skill points, they help you get used to the game. Skill points can be assigned in the skills section of he menu. The second most important thing you can do is find a zone that isn't hostile and has plenty of resources. I'd suggest completing the tasks and trying to find a safe zone at the same time as well as scavenging buildings, boxes, rubbish etc, on the way.

Tip: When scavenging at the start, take everything. Things you don't need straight away may be very useful in the future.

Tip: When you find a manual/book, read it straight away, no point in filling up an empty slot. If you've already read the manual then you can either save it for someone else on your server or read it to boost your skills.

Tip: If you find a treasure map, read it but don't bother searching for it straight away as digging takes for ever when you're at a low level.

Normally the green/grass zone is the best place to start. The green zone should have almost all the resources you need to start off with, plenty of wood, fibre, stone and possibly even water. Animals should appear in any zone and if you're Dave (Diddums), then you'll have a deer or pig every two feet. There's also chickens, rabbits and bears (watch out for them!!) If on your travels you pass a city, mark it on your map because you may need to dash there if you haven't built or found anywhere else to survive the first night. In cities or towns there are usually tall buildings with a ladder to the roof, that's a pretty safe place to camp up but zombies can climb ladders so make sure you stick a hatch on top. It's generally easier to find a house or building and set that up as your house, build off it and secure it. I only advise this because collecting resources takes a long time to start with and building a house from scratch along with a low level takes a good while. Use the first 6 days to collect resources and build up your level, they'll be plenty of time to build a base from scratch
If you do choose to build a house from scratch then put a floor down, zombies will dig under your blocks and come up the other side. Build a small structure, as you can always expand in the future. Just make sure you can get to the roof from the inside, just in case the zombies get in, it'll give you an extra escape route that's not just the door.

Doors: You can lock and put codes on doors by holding triangle on it (PS4), if you're playing on a server where randoms can just join then lock your door! The last thing you want is someone stealing all your stuff when you've only just started. Obviously, remember the code 😄 Doors can also be upgraded like blocks.
Once you've found somewhere secure, place your bedroll down, this is where you'll spawn if/when you die. If you've already placed your bedroll then no worries as the newly placed bedroll takes over from the last one.

Next thing to do is build yourself a stonefire (think that's what it's called), hopefully you will have found a cooking pot on your travels, as you need a cooking pot to cook pretty much anything but if you have collected some meat then you can make burnt meat. You'll need fuel for your fire, coal is the best but wood works too. Murky water can be boiled and safely drunk.

Tip: You can eat and drink raw meat and murky water, it will decrease yo stamina, leave you unable to run for a bit and could possible give you dysentery. So this is always a last option but if you need to then do!

The first few days can be pretty chilled, you might get a few attacking at night but if you've set yourself up in a decent place then i wouldn't worry.

Main Tip: Collect resources during the day, so you have something to do during night time. There's nothing worse than being trapped on a building with no wood to build a hut.

 

Happy surviving!

[phil bottle 9,571]

Good stuff Rich.

Craft as much as possible. Make loads of arrows and then crossbow bolts.

Levelling up skills is essential.

I went for 100% on scavenger early on to get access to decent loot.

[tronic44 3,628]

Surviving Your First Horde Night:

Hordes arrive from 22:00 - 06:00, every 7 days. Some horde nights can be hectic but occasionally they can be a little quiet. The import thing to remember about horde nights is that they will come for you from all angles, so don't concentrate on one side of your base with out checking the rest. I've had anything from 10 zombies to 50+, you want to make sure you've got a secure base with that amount! On one occasion there's been so many zombies that they've started to pile up on top of each other, almost to the point they could get over the wall that runs around the perimeter of the base. Most the time they will try and break down walls, doors, hatches etc The only way to combat this is to upgrade as much as you can and make it harder for them to bust through. The one zombie that can get around this is the spider zombie

This dude can climb walls no problem, which can be a major issue. The best way to stop this is to either kill them before they get to the top or build an overhang, he can only travel vertically so this stops him from getting over. (Video coming soon)

 

Spikes will be your best friend during horde nights, lay them everywhere around your base. Spikes will stop and slow zombies down but sometimes crawlers get through uninvited. I find it best to try and take the zombies done before they do too much damage to your spikes, otherwise you'll find you'll be replacing them a hell of a lot. 

Just make sure you're counting your days till horde night and don't get left out in the open when it starts.

 

Leading up to horde night:

Make sure you're fully stocked on resources, spikes, arrows, anything you think you may need for a horde night. Craft your arrows and make your spikes before hand, so you're not having to mess about whilst they're attacking. Also make sure you're fully fed and hydrated. 

 

Happy surviving!

 

[tronic44 3,628]

Random tips:

- Search tree stumps for loot, they can contain some really decent items.

- When you're in a supermarket or some other shop, you may find cardboard boxes that you can search and other wooden boxes that you can't. You need to break the wooden boxes as there are cardboard ones inside.

- Make coffee at early stages (if found) and always carry it on you, you don't loose stamina after having drunk it for quite a while. Could be the difference when trying to get home before 10:00. It will also helps when mining at early levels.

- Look out for wall safes in offices, they're only small and easily missed.

- Use the wrench for dismantling cars and other machinery, you will getting better resources by doing this and may find some interesting things.

- If you're away from base with a fire but no cooking pot, you can use a tin can to boil water you have collected in it.

- And most importantly, don't say you've got the auger when you haven't got all the parts. Not naming any names.......Adam!

[tronic44 3,628]

[tronic44 3,628]

Skills and Perks:
Skills and perks are obtained by doing things in the world or spending your skill points. Skills/perks can either be 1 skill point or 10 skill points at a time. I've start by noting down my top ten skills/perks that i think are best for upgrading first, along with some graphs to show you the benefits of upgrading them. Apologies for my graphs, i hate spreadsheets.

 

Top ten:
1. Miner 69'er - is a perk that increases your block damage and decreases your stamina degradation when hitting blocks while using Mining Tools. I'd say this is one of the most important perks you can upgrade from the start, as having to stop every so often to regain stamina can get very annoying but you will need to have your mining tools to a certain level before you can upgrade this. Below is a graph of the increase when you upgrade.

2. Mining Tools - This is one of the skills in the game, you can improve you mining tools by either using tools to collect resources or you can spend skill points on them. You also need to increase this to certain levels to be able to upgrade minor 69'er. Below is a graph of the multiples per level.

3. The Survivor - Slows your metabolism so you don't need to eat as often and gain more wellness from everything you do!

4. Run Forest Run - Running uses 10% less Stamina per rank. Very important to rank this up.

5. The Camel - Slows you thirst so you don't have to drink as much. If you can find a water source straight away, you could hold off this for a little while but you will be drinking quite regularly.

6. Sexual Tyranosaurus -  is a perk that increases your stamina gain with each level it is increased. A very useful perk in the early game, as there is a lot of running around to do, especially at night evading zombies. It works very well with the Run Forest Run perk for exploring and not having to stop to regain stamina so often. Each leveling up you do gives you an extra 20% in stamina gain.

7. Scavenging - Each skill point spent on this will increase your chance of finding good loot. I'd mix this in whilst upgrading the other main perks.

8. Steel Smithing - This perk gives your character the ability to craft various steel items. This is a seriously important perk, steel tools are way better than anything else you'll use.

9. Athletics - Upgrading this means a slower drain of Stamina and an increase in the duration the survivor can hold his breath.

10. Health Nut - This will increase your minimum and maximum wellness. Your athletics must be up to a certain level to upgrade this. 

 

There are others that can be useful, but for when you're first starting off, these to me are the most important.

1.  

[tronic44 3,628]

No idea what happened there....

[Dr Diamond 407]

I wouldn't bother with atheletics or health nut early in the game. You level up atheletics very quickly as it is from all the running. Same with health nut, early in the game youre trying to avoid zombies at all costs so its rare you will need lots of health...imo.

I went with quaility joe to get some slightly better loot.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[tronic44 3,628]

18 hours ago, Dr Diamond said:

I wouldn't bother with atheletics or health nut early in the game. You level up atheletics very quickly as it is from all the running. Same with health nut, early in the game youre trying to avoid zombies at all costs so its rare you will need lots of health...imo.

I went with quaility joe to get some slightly better loot.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 

I see what you mean but I can't stand having shite stamina, hate having a stop to catch my breathe all the time.

 

The quality that you'll get early on will still be shite compared to what you get after day 100. That's another reason why there's almost no point in using weapons at the start, you need to build other skills up first.

[tronic44 3,628]

Random Tip:

You may find swimming pools in the back of some gardens, swim to the bottom of the deep end.