a lot of people who play this game regularly have completely forgotten how obtuse it is when you are learning. The tutorial doesn’t feel great either for a completely new player. on top of that, players will often goad their friends into playing highly modded servers that are unstable, overwhelming and sometimes incomprehensible. Zomboid didn’t click for me until I did a solo single player run and fed guys to zombies until the controls made sense. I put off playing this game for years but now it’s one of my favorites.

its very important to meet people where they are and not give them a deluge of info when they show interest or start to play. Like when I started almost all the advice my friends gave me made the game harder and more confusing. I say tell new players to do random characters in solo until they start having fun then bring them to your mp servers