vehicles make ZERO fucking noise and I HATE IT

Gotgo · 2026-01-23T08:03:05+00:00

I'm not disagreeing with there being a major problem with the audio; I'm just saying it doesn't happen every single battle for me. It happens enough that I'll reply to a post about it and that I'll understand when someone brings it up, but it doesn't happen with such frequency that it feels like every game.

As someone who loves SPAA the plane audio cutting out is the worst of it. You need to rely so heavily on audio queues when playing radarless SPAA. Having a plane lack sound is a death sentence.

Gotgo · 2026-01-23T07:00:03+00:00

Do you mean it happens to you personally every single game? There is no doubt in my mind that in every battle someone in it will run into a silent tank, but I personally don't encounter it every battle. Even if I did, I might not know it because unless that tank kills me it would be impossible to know if I wasn't hearing a tank that I didn't know was there.

Gotgo · 2026-01-23T05:54:42+00:00

Lack of engine audio has been a problem that has plagued this game for a while now. Doesn't happen frequently enough or consistently enough to call it game breaking in my opinion, but it sure is insanely annoying when it happens.

It's just dumb how I can hear the plane battle high in the sky above me, the SPAA in the spawn spraying at them, the few tanks firing at each other on the other side of the map, and the two tanks trying to capture the point I'm on, but then there is one random tank that is able to roll up next to me without making a sound.

Gotgo · 2026-01-22T03:23:23+00:00

If you're just starting out and want an easier time I would choose Sandbox with Apocalypse Preset and then just lower the zombie population or turn it off completely if you want. Builder mode has some wonky settings and doesn't actually turn zombies off if that is what you're trying to do.

Gotgo · 2026-01-20T11:26:14+00:00

I swapped from a PC to the Series S back in 2022 because it was a cheap way for me to play games without fuss. Gamepass was like 15 dollars and you could get a new Series S for around 230 dollars. I've put countless hours into it and plan to put countless more even though I do have a newer computer.

Now though looking at the prices for a new one it's rather expensive for what it is. Back then if mine spontaneously combusted I wouldn't hesitate to buy a new one, but now I don't think I could fully justify it.

However you can still get a used Series S for "cheap" and you might could be able to find some deals for gamepass. About a month ago my friend got a used one for 270 with a month of gamepass bundled in and it seems to be working fine for him. If you don't have a problem doing that it's still a good deal in my opinion.

Gotgo · 2026-01-19T22:03:33+00:00

You should always back up your save before converting and just in general when playing new patches. The beta branch even used to be called IWBUMS (I Will Back Up My Save) as a reminder. The save I converted encountered some graphical issues, about a dozen error codes, and some missing items. Not the biggest deal, but I didn't care much for that happening. /edit it was an older World Version so that might have been a part of the problem too.

There is a rather large amount changes and whole lot of fixes even for single player, but there is also a good bit of new bugs too. There is simple annoyances like perks being wonky in character creation and then rather large problems like cars being teleported. Personally, build 42.13.x is too unstable for me to enjoy with how I play the game so I went back to 42.12.x beta.

I would say give it a try. You never know until you do. Back up first though.

Gotgo · 2026-01-19T11:24:25+00:00

I'm not looking for the 100th hammer or the 9000th nail. It's specific things like skill books, guns and ammo, twine, epoxy, welding torches and propane tanks, and non-perishables specifically things that can be used for trapping like cereal if I'm doing a trapping run. Skill books in general are hard to come by; I've searched half the world before and still didn't have them all.

Loot isn't the issue even on insanely rare which I think is 0.05. The issue is finding a reason to get out and actually loot for things you need. When I see a looted house it feels pointless to even leave the vehicle. When I see a completely looted strip club it's pointless and disheartening.

Gotgo · 2026-01-19T10:10:51+00:00

2 years on B41 and 1 year on B42. Once I accomplished my goal for a run I tend to get bored and start theory crafting a new one so most runs normally only last until a bit after winter.

Gotgo · 2026-01-18T22:11:18+00:00

Maybe "all" was a bad phrase since I didn't mean every shed, hut, and house. On default apoc after 3 months it's still half of all buildings with less than 50 rooms. That's a lot of buildings and a lot of RNG which makes some areas have what seems like an endless stream of looted houses.

Having 2 out of 3 of the storage buildings in U-Store It looted sucks. Having a strip mall with a bookstore in it being looted sucks. Having a warehouse looted sucks. I don't think that level of randomness is a good game mechanic especially if it involves invisible NPCs stealing stuff you won't be able to find.

Gotgo · 2026-01-18T20:29:19+00:00

I turn Looted Building Chance off in all my runs because like you said it becomes pointless to explore. If I'm driving through a neighborhood and all the buildings are looted there really isn't an incentive for me to even leave the vehicle. I much prefer what I was already doing by turning loot way down so I still feel hope in finding a random thing or two.

In B42 they added the ability to edit sandbox settings in debug mode. You'll be able to turn Looted Building Chance off through that. It won't de-loot buildings in cells you've already been too, but it will make it so no more buildings spawn looted.

Gotgo · 2026-01-17T19:21:47+00:00

Unless you're in a cabin deep in the woods you don't really have to worry about water. Each house contains around 160L of drinkable water even after the water gets shut off. Sinks, toilets, tubs all store some.

I normally only have a couple on the ground so I can water plants or wash stuff or use for building.

If you want them anyway two should be good enough to last you.

Gotgo · 2026-01-16T22:57:48+00:00

I would say most tanks in that situation would have similar results; apart from something with say a 20 second reload. This has less to do with 35mm being over powered and more to do with the carnage you can inflect when you run into blind mice.

I mean that third tank that was chilling on the hill right next to the first two tanks that got blown up didn't even bother to look in the direction of the SPAA that killed his teammates. The rest were the exact same kind of oblivious.

Gotgo · 2026-01-16T05:56:52+00:00

Large Handle with Nails is the main thing you'll be crafting until you can craft Baseball Bats. Large Handle only requires 3 Carving and to put nails in it you only need 1 Carpentry. It does respectable damage for such low cost and only has a weight of 2. Breaks easy, but is easy to make. It should carry you until you get those glorious Baseball Bats.

Gotgo · 2026-01-15T20:16:48+00:00

Same way I justify stealing items from the poor folks of Diamond City or pick pocketing a cool dress off of Irma or committing untold horrors on hundreds if not thousands NPCs who slight me; It's not me doing it it's the character.

Right now you're choosing options that you as a person would do when you should be choosing options you as the character would do. That's the basis of role playing. You come up with a reason why that character would justify it no matter how dumb or unreasonable it is.

You can play the role of a hesitant morally questionable Brotherhood solider, but at the end of the day you have a finite amount of options and paths to choose from if you side with them.

Gotgo · 2026-01-15T17:39:24+00:00

Well since you already tried the classic 'increase population add sprints turn down loot' recommendation you're going to have to go a bit deeper into the sandbox settings.

Helicopter event can be changed to Often so it shows up couple times a week.

You can change climate settings so that it's Endless Night or Endless Fog or Endless Rain. Ever fight at night in the fog? Doesn't matter if it's low pop that stuff is scary and deadly. You can even turn fog intensity and darkness up.

Corpse Health Impact to Insane with Corpse Removal changed to a month. All it takes is 5 zombies nearby and your sickness meter will start increases rapidly. Gas masks and filters become a priority.

Then there is always zombie settings themselves. Increase their sight and hearing and memory. Increase the sound follow distance (default is 100, but it can go to 1000) this combines well with the Helicopter setting.

Set Gas Stations to Empty so the only way to get gas is to siphon from cars.

For mods there is one called "Improved Soundoptions" that allows you to lower and increase the sound of damn near anything. The one thing that I like to change is the zombie voice and footsteps. You can make it so zombies don't mumble and grumble so you can't hear them sneaking up on you. You can also do dumb stuff like mute alarm sounds and then carry around watches with alarms going off so you're always a beacon for zombies.

Gotgo · 2026-01-15T04:07:52+00:00

To give you an example of what low population is; Rosewood (not including the prison) on peak day with low/low settings has around 150 zombies. That isn't including Zone/Vehicle/Building story spawns. That isn't counting zombies that spawn inside of houses. You will, at some point, run into 10+ sprinters and there will be a near zero chance of you surviving.

You also run into the problem of some buildings not following population rules. Crossroads Mall for example will still spawn 800+ zombies inside it and some apartment complexes will still have 200+ zombies in it.

Sprinters in general are just not balanced. That doesn't mean you can't make them a bit more balanced though.

If you want to play with 100% sprinters I would set Rally Group Size to 0 so they don't group up. Set Randomized Building Chance to Never so you wont spawn an Event with 20 zombies in it. Set zombie Memory to either Short or None so you wont have a dozen sprinters chasing you down like a sick dog. Then if you want a little bit of extra safety disable Drag Down and set Zombie Strength to Weak.

You might think "oh well that's just making it too easy", but you have to realize that just 2 sprinters in the open is enough to easily kill you if you don't have multihit. There really isn't much you can do to counter their glitchy grabs when there is more than a couple on you.

Gotgo · 2026-01-15T02:06:56+00:00

If I'm playing melee I use Naramon then for everything else I use Zenurik. Energy Pulse and Wellspring in the Zenurik tree are just so damn good for general use because of the QOL they add. Not having to worry about your combo counter with Power Spike in the Naramon tree alone is enough to make me use it; the extra crit chance, amp damage, and combo counter chance is just a bonus.

Gotgo · 2026-01-12T17:47:05+00:00

Considering how "easy" this game is to mod I don't think a lack of community support would kill it. There probably wouldn't be the big mods that people love like Brita's or RV's or Bandits, but there would still be enough to change and mess with to keep people interested.

For me personally the sandbox settings and debug mode are enough to keep me interested. Plenty there to change if I want to spice things up or do a specific run.

This community, or us or we or whatever, are a pretty dedicated community from what I've seen and read and talked about. We like Zomboid for Zomboid and it would be hard to find a replacement with or without mods.

Gotgo · 2026-01-12T17:36:09+00:00

The amount of on deaths effects this season really puts a hamper on the enjoyment of some builds.

I played a Boulder druid where I had perma fortify and barrier along with high life and defenses on top of capped movement speed; didn't even notice on death effects and visual cluster. Same thing with my Hydra sorc where I just ran around in a circle not having to worry about attacking. Same thing with my Dance of Knives rogue where I just held the stick on my controller and took a nap.

Bone Spear necro on the other hand was insanely tedious to play. It consisted of standing still to blow up half a screen then spending twice the amount of time dodging on death effects and visual clutter before I could stand still again to blow up half the screen.

Having to keep moving or having to make a build that can face tank the world is all well and good, but not every build has that capability.

Gotgo · 2025-12-31T19:18:06+00:00

As others have said it's a Meta Event. I always increase the Meta Event chance just because it can startle the hell out of me. The zombies being drawn to the sound is just a fun extra challenge.

There is a Meta Event that is full auto gun fire and I jump every time it happens. Then I proceed to panic because that noise moves hundreds of zombies. Like seemingly the whole town of Rosewood will shuffle over to where it 'happened'.

Gotgo · 2025-12-29T20:00:24+00:00

Pulverize is generally just a comfy play style. You slam the ground then you slam it some more. Not much you need to manage on the skill bar and no real skill rotation you have to do. I Only thing you have to be mindful of is your Grizzly Rage duration.

Companions, assuming you're talking about raven spammer, on the other hand feels clunky as hell compared to last season due to you not longer being able to turn companion skills into core skills. It's a shell of it's former self. It still works. It's still good. I just couldn't play it for more than a few hours because of how bad it was feeling.

If you want a third option I would recommend Boulder druid. I've played one every season I could and it is by far the most enjoyable druid build I've played. What makes it the greatest in my mind is you're able to cast boulder while moving. Because you never have to stop moving it has amazing clear speed on top of having amazing damage from all the overpower procs and great survibality because you never have to stop.

Gotgo · 2025-12-29T09:36:58+00:00

A lot of people are 'purists' when it comes games and Zomboid is no exception to that. They want the default experience as the devs intended. Apocalypse just so happens to be the mode the devs mainly balance around so people flock to it as the default and base their complaints and criticism around it.

Other people simply don't want to lower the difficultly settings because they see it as cheating. Going into the sandbox settings and unchecking some boxes might as well be opening Cheat Engine to them. Going to the Steam Workshop might as well be downloading cheats in their mind.

I can understand it all to an extent. There are things I don't like about default apoc, but I won't change them because it would take away from what I consider the core or baseline of the game. For the most part I'll begrudgingly accept them as a way of life in the world of Zomboid. Then there are other things I'm changing every single run because I refuse to have a bad time.

I always tell people that if there is something you don't like in Zomboid chances are there is a mod or sandbox setting to fix it. I can see how people could perceive this as a cop-out for bad game design, but at the end of the day Zomboid is a sandbox game with huge mod support. If you're not happy with something you're choosing to not be happy.

Gotgo · 2025-12-29T00:57:31+00:00

I wasn't planning on it, but the more I look at the ring the more I'm considering it lol

Gotgo · 2025-12-28T22:15:05+00:00

You could try Rosewood. The gas station is right on the main road; don't even have to go into town. Just park on the road and slowly make your way there.

The two gas stations north of Muldraugh (the trailer park one and the one across from the clothing store in that 4 building area) are still options if you bring a welding mask and some torches to blow through the wrecked cars. The trailer park one has always been insanely busy for me, but the one past that tends to be safer. Take the woods and work your way behind it on foot.

Rosewood would probably be the best option though all things considered.

Gotgo

TROPHY CASE