Spawning & Character Creation Guide Project Zomboid

what's going on Welcome Back ladies and gentlemen I'm your host Tony snaps back with another video in the series we're making to help new players achieve their quest in surviving their first week in project zomo in the first video of the series we covered 20 mods that are great from when you're just starting out and we also took a look at the in-game settings and go over which ones are worth changing so if you haven't watched that video yet and it sounds like something you would be interested in definitely go check that one out you won't regret it so for this video we'll be talking a little bit about the different spawn points and where you should consider spawning and then we're going to hop into character creation and we are going to go over professions skills and traits and help you avoid some common Noob traps that a lot of new players fall for we will also be taking a look at the character we will be using for our playthrough where we are going to go through the first week of the game on apocalypse difficulty to show you how to get off to a great start when beginning a new run all right let's get into it when we are starting a new run we are faced with our first big question where should I spawn and we have to choose between four options MRA Riverside Rosewood and West Point I haven't done many runs in MRA so before I can say with confidence if it's good or bad I need to actually do some runs there but for those people out there who have done runs in MRA let me know in the comments do you like it here as a starting town and if not what is your favorite area to start him but that is going to leave us with three options left and I do have plenty of experience with all of them it's well known that West point is not a beginner friendly starting area the Zombie Pop is a lot higher here than the other choices so I think it's worth avoiding starting here for a while at least until you get some more experience under your belt and you're ready for a new challenge that's going to leave us with two options being Riverside and Rosewood now Rosewood is the smallest of the starting four so this is where everyone tells new players they should spawn and for that reason this is where I did almost all of my runs when I was new to the game Rosewood has a big fire station which is usually the place where everyone has their first base when starting the game it's relatively safe with three of the four sides having a tall fence already built around it so it makes for a pretty good base when you're just starting out and if you ask most season players they probably have based here at one time or another Rosewood also has a lot more to offer including a police station a school a drive-in and much more you really can't go wrong with picking Rosewood it's a great place to go especially when you're a new player with that being said I do think Riverside is the better option Riverside is a lot bigger and I personally don't think that just because someone is new this is going to overwhelm them or make things harder I actually think it makes things a bit easier as a matter of fact since it's bigger there's a lot more loot so that means you can stay in Riverside a lot longer than you can Rosewood after you get used to Rosewood and have looted the whole town a few times you come to realize you could actually finish the town pretty quickly so now you have to go and find a new town and that itself can be dangerous Riverside also has a lot more going for it compared to Rosewood there are some great warehouses and the loot here you get is unbelievable I actually cannot believe the loot I got here and that's when my loot settings were on insanely rare and I was also playing with a mod that reduced my loot even more and I was still swimming in loot Riverside also has a video store and this could be huge for leveling some of your skills really quickly for example if you get one of the Car Zone vhs's and you read mechanics one then you watch the VHS boom level two mechanics just like that now all you need is a level an electrical and now you're all ready to hot wire Vehicles Riverside also has a river shocker but this is nice because it allows for easy fishing admittedly I don't think this is a game Cher on apocalypse difficulty since the loot is set to rare there's plenty of food so you could ignore fishing altogether if you wanted to but it's still great to have a place you can always rely on to catch dinner there is a place you can fish in Rosewood as well but it's just a small Lake and it's out of the way one thing to note about Riverside is it is a little bit further out than the rest of the towns so when you do eventually leave it's a bit more traveling so some people might find that annoying I don't think it's that big of a deal but it's worth mentioning but even with that in mind I still think Riverside edges out the rest by a bit and is in my opinion the best place to start when you're new to the game with that being said you can find success in every single starting area so try them all out and figure out which one you like and then try to learn that place inside and out and master it for our playthrough we are going to be spawning in Riverside so you figured out where you want to spawn and now you have to build your character and this is the most important thing you need to think about and consider because once you hop into game your decisions are final and cannot be changed now I know when I first started playing I vividly remember when I got to this page it was a bit of information overload and I basically just randomly picked things that I thought looked cool or sounded good and honestly it was kind of a great part of the game and I looked back on it fondly therefore I think if you are brand new you should really experiment and try your own different builds and see see what works it's really fun and rewarding when you figure out that one trait that is really strong on your own so I don't want to take that away from you however I do want to go over several things that I think will be really helpful for you to create your very own character build and mention a few things that are not super obvious when you're new so for those of you who are brand new to project zomboid and you're completely lost when looking at this page let me give you a little bit of a rundown to help you understand things a bit better so first things first this is a list of all the occupations in the game and you have to choose one each occupation has a cost as you can see the cost down here is changing every time I click on a new one and every occupation has different stats and some even come with their own special trait so over here we have all the positive traits in green and they also have a point cost all of these positive traits will make your character stronger in one way or another and the way we pay for these points from the professions and positive traits is by taking negative traits down here in red and these will make your character weaker in different ways now it's worth mentioning there are some negative traits that if you take you can lose during the game for instance the underweight trait this will make your character weigh 70 kg at the start of the game and that's going to reduce our damage among other things however when we gain weight in game and once we get to 75 kgs we will no longer be underweight and no longer have the debuffs and we will lose the underweight trade so the more positive trades we want our character to have we need to balance that out with negative trades it's really fun mixing and matching and figuring out ways to get the most out of the system every skill in the game goes up to level 10 but with the help of professions and positive traits we can get a head start right out of the gate and start with points in the skills we want and when we do start with a point in something you also get an XP bonus to that skill as well you can see here we selected brawler and we have a bonus to axes as well as long blunt so now let's talk a little bit about the different skills in Project zomboid Fitness this is one of the most important skills in the game game because this affects the rate of endurance loss and recovery so the higher Fitness the longer you can fight for for every level of Fitness you gain 2% attack speed block chance and trip reduction you also get a 2% chance to successfully climb tall fences your strength will affect your melee damage your carry weight as well as your knockdown chance on zombies like Fitness the higher your strength the higher chance you have to successfully climb tall fences and will also give you 2% block chance per level and if you are confused about block chance it's nothing you have to do manually your character will automatically have a chance on their own of pushing a zombie away when attacked drank is another great skill to invest in but in my opinion is not as good as Fitness but still really good nonetheless Fitness and strength take a lot longer to level than most skills in the game so it's worth considering investing in professions and traits that give a boost to these skills you will level both skills naturally and you could also exercise to level even faster moving on to the sprinting skill this will affect how fast your character not only Sprints but how fast they run run as well and also how fast they run while sneaking lightf footed affects how loud your footsteps are and how far away zombies can hear you your Nimble level will determine how fast your character moves while in combat stance as well as your footstep loudness this is another very important skill like Fitness and strength it takes a while to level up so it's definitely worth considering investing in this one the sneaking skill affects how loud your footsteps are when you're sneaking and How likely it is for a zombie to spot you the maintenance skill reduces the chance for your melee weapons to lose condition on each hit this means the higher your maintenance the longer your weapons will last before they break some weapons like the crafted spear for example gets a lot better once you get some points going in maintenance it's a great skill and one worth investing in for sure now in the interest of time I'm not going to go over the rest of skills and most of them are self-explanatory anyway but I just throw up some pictures from the pz wiki if you want to read a bit more about them you can pause the video I'm also not going to get into aiming and reloading I'll throw some slides up but if you are new you should honestly just ignore guns for a while they are very loud and will draw a bunch of zombies to your location and you will most likely not have enough ammo to deal with them it will also most likely get you killed or just put you in a really bad spot until you know what you're doing with them all right let's talk a little bit about professions and I'm not going to get into every single one but I do want to touch on a couple that I see a ton of new players always taking so for professions if you have an idea of what weapon type you want to use or if you value certain skills you're going to want to find a profession that offers those things and if you want a particular profession but it's missing a skill you want then you want to find a positive tradeit that has what you're looking for like I said earlier some professions automatically get certain traits The Lumberjack gets the infamous axeman trait this is a great perk that no other profession can obtain but what most people don't even realize is the 25% swing speed bonus only applies to trees not zombies thanks to the mod we have more description for trades we can see axeman only gives you 5% swing speed against zombies and while this is noticeable it's not the end all be all I thought it was when I was new as we mentioned earlier you get 2% swing speed for every level in Fitness and 3% swing speed anytime you level up a weapon sorry if I ruin Lumberjack for anyone out there that wasn't aware of this but it's still a great profession and if you know you're going to be mainly using axes and you're going to be chopping down a bunch of trees you can't go wrong with Lumberjack another occupation I noticed new players love using is the burglar while this is a decent one the bonus you get to Nimble is great new players are usually taking this because they want to get a car right away and honestly this is the wrong reason to take this occupation it is great if for whatever reason you wanted to leave your starting town on day one but cars and car keys are pretty easy to come by an apocalypse difficulty also a car is not something you really need your first week of the game if you get one great but it's not the end of the world if you don't personally I usually try to get a few cars weeks 2 and three and bring them to a gas station and fill up their tanks this way if I don't get lucky and find the Jenny mag right away and then the power goes out at least I have a few tanks of gas to drive around until I find the mag it's also a pretty expensive profession coming at a cost of six points so I just wanted to point out that getting a car is not as crucial as a lot of new players seem to think few occupations you can't go wrong with are the repairman and burger flipper both of these get a bonus to maintenance and the only way to get maintenance from traits is from the handy trait however this trait is really expensive costing eight points the chef also gets a bonus to maintenance but it costs 6 more more points than Burger flipper and it's really not worth it in my opinion police officer is good if you plan on doing a long run and you mainly want to use guns later in the run the veteran is good if you want to use guns early thanks to the desensitized trait this perk makes it so your character doesn't get panic when your character does become panicked they lose accuracy crit chance and damage some occupations I would stay away from are the doctor and nurse first aid is the most useless skill in the game currently so until this is reworked these ones are worth avoiding farmer and fisherman are another two I would stay away from unless you're doing some sort of RP Fire officer is another great occupation and this is who I'll be using for my playthrough and the reason I'm using this profession is it gets a bonus point in Fitness so this allows me to take the negative trait underweight and with a positive tradeit athletic this will put me at nine Fitness which is a crucial number for actually getting the athletic perk which you only get at 9 or 10 Fitness a lot of people don't realize this and they go Lumberjack and take on underweight and then they don't have access to the perk and while they can get it once they hit nine Fitness it just takes a while to get there and it's nice having it right off the bat so like occupations I don't want to go over every single trait maybe in a future video I could do a tier list of all of them but for now I just want to mention a few that you should consider using for your build and talk about some you should stay away from some negative perks that I consider free are slow healer prone to illness smoker weak stomach shortsighted and high thirst all of these are really easy to deal with flow heal ER you don't even notice prone to illness this is the freest of free I I mean there's no reason not to take this one it says more prone to disease faster rate of zombification that doesn't matter you're still turning into a zombie smoker can be a bit annoying because if you don't find cigarettes right away then your character will get anxious and this will eventually lead to depression when that does happen you could either take some anti-depressants and if you don't have any of those you could drink some alcohol before you go to bed High thirst is another negative trait that many people consider free and it is on a normal run you just we're going to take it in our build you just carry around a couple extra water bottles and it's no big deal but I do a lot of challenge type runs like mainly Zero to Hero so I have no Fitness starting out and no strength so I have no carry weight and this could be really annoying in those type of runs but other than that it's usually worth taking some of the positive traits I always recommend taking are cat eyes dextrous wakeful gymnast fast learner Keen hearing and athletic cat eyes is just really nice being able to see at night time that's basically all it does and it it's just really nice 20% % better Vision dextrus this just helps you loot quickly minus 50% transferring time so that's really nice you just loot a lot faster wakeful this is in my opinion the best bargain in the game for two points it allows you to get so much more done during the day I remember when I was new to the game I always felt my character was getting tired really fast and then I tried wakeful and it's been a staple in every single build I've used since then gymnast is great if your occupation doesn't start with any points in Nimble best learner is another one I like taking to help cut down the grind by a bit six points for a 30% increase to XP gain is a pretty good deal and worth investing in Keen hearing is really nice so no zombies sneak up on you you may be able to get away without this one but everyone swears by it and for the Sixpoint cost it's always a trade I take but try playing without it and let me know in the comments how it went was it noticeable weak stomach is another one I consider free just don't eat burnt food and this is free points athletic is another great trait worth picking up it costs the most points for a reason Fitness is is the best skill in the game and being able to start the game with this much of a boost almost feels like cheating if you don't believe me go play with zero Fitness and get back to me let me know how it went a few traits I would stay away from are de illiterate and Sunday driver sound is really important in this game and unless you're doing a challenge run death is really difficult to play with and it's not worth the 12 points down is everything in this game so stay away from this one illiterate is another one I would stay away from even if you weren't going to read skill books you won't be able to read the Jenny mag and that would just suck not being able to turn on the lights Sunday driver is another one I would just stay away from it's not worth one point and it's just annoying to deal with for what you're getting and one thing I want to mention about herbalist is you could find the herbalist mag in game so it's not really worth the six points so this is the build I'm going to be using for the playthrough where I'm going to go through the first week of the game on apocalypse difficulty to try to help those of you that are struggling in surviving your first week of the game so just going over my build a bit more I will be taking feeble which will reduce my strength by two but this isn't so bad because fire officers starts with a bonus point in strength so I'll be starting the game with four and we can exercise and get the five strength somewhat quickly I'm also taking fast reader normally if you're doing a long run slow reader is usually better since there's only so much reading you have to do so that's worth keeping in mind I'm also taking organized I like taking this trait when I can it's a great trait that gives 30% increased capacity to containers that includes your backpacks and your car seats so it's nice to have but you could definitely live without it for sure so now we know where we want to spawn and we build our character what next all for that you're going to have to tune in to the next video cuz that about wraps up this one I hope you learned something and if not you just enjoyed hanging out with me for a bit if you did enjoy the video please consider dropping a like and a sub it would mean a lot to me I really am trying my best to put out quality content for you guys after I put out my first video we got 11 subs and that was awesome so thank you to those who did sub and like I really really appreciate it I have another video planned before we get into the playthrough so keep your eyes open for that one it will be out very soon anyways on Tony snaps and until next time peace

Channel: TonySnaps

Views: 221

Keywords: Project Zomboid, Guide, series, spawn, new player, character, creation

Id: vn0amCBtYto

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024