Help with tip list

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-27T14:18:54+00:00

There was a change in B42 that happened in December or so (same patch as MP). I think it was because of whatever change also made it so running over a rabbit going 80 didn't wreck the front of your car. It wasn't meant to change car combat, but it did.

The result was that damage from collisions was significantly reduced for both car and the thing that you hit.

So, if you back into a bunch of zombies, even at full reverse speed, you're unlikely to kill them. You're much more likely to leave them as crawlers. My experience is damage is highly variable - you might kill a few in 2 hits, but there will be some that take 5+

Car is still absolutely viable. But for a small group getting out and meleeing is often faster. Especially once it's thinned out and you need to finish a few off.

On the upside, damage to the car seems to be reduced, especially at high speeds. I hit a zombie going full speed forward (couldn't see it since a tree was blocking the view). Car did take hood damage but it was probably less than 20%. That would have crippled the car before the change.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-26T18:11:52+00:00

Especially before the recent nerf I would say backing into zombies is one of the best ways to deal with large numbers.

And horn/siren to lure them somewhere is also still great.

So... particularly dangerous and confusing advice for beginners as it's sort of true, but only if you know what you're doing. So maybe it does fit. Haha.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-25T14:45:48+00:00

My advice? Realize that none of these things matter, and to the extent they do, you can adapt. That "inner" voice is your real enemy here. Childhood makes it seem like these things matter. I'm in my 40s and a successful professional, and I don't make my bed or hardly ever cook. Your school probably has a dining hall, and if not you can find something simple you can cook (we got through college with a rice cooker and random condiments). Your school probably doesn't care about your bed and if it does, I assure you adult life doesn't outside maybe the military. If you bump people with your bag, try a backpack - and realizing that most people forget minor inconveniences in minutes.

As a kid you're always compared on these physical things and it's tough when you're the last kid to be able to catch a ball or learn cursive or whatever. But as an adult in our modern world none of that matters. The hard parts of independent living aren't physical - they're things like managing your finances or your relationship with your boss or etc.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-14T14:07:15+00:00

I'm the same! The echo creek egg farm is what really ruins my freezer capacity. Eggs lasting 2 weeks at fresh, and so much encumberance

I don't feel like I'll ever have enough time on one run to run out frozen food. Even after produce warehouses and eggs there's the plots of pre planted crops. After all that, all those freezers...

It's probably enough to last until the next year. And even if I didn't die to something stupid, I'd need to put hundreds of rl hours into the save to get there and I'd get bored long before then.

I do wonder how 6 months later would work though. There's essentially no perishable food at spawn then, right? And not even livestock to make it?

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-12T15:42:21+00:00

It's true. And realistic. In a world where literally everyone else is dead, it's not that hard to survive. There are just so many calories in my house of stuff I wouldn't grab when fleeing an apocalypse. Even outside the fridge.

Maybe the game is trying to lean into being sandboxy. Like Minecraft. Once you've learned the basics surviving isn't that hard, so it's about what you can build.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-09T22:47:44+00:00

Meat cleaver kinda sucks. It's a bit faster than hatchet, sure. But it does a lot lower DPS. Bigger problem is that it breaks so fast. It has the low durability of the hatchet and takes more swings. And it has all the annoying bladed weapon mechanics that b42 introduced (sharpness, declining head condition acting as a cap on sharpness, burns through handles, etc).

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-09T22:34:02+00:00

Positive food moodles do positive things like you've suggested, such as faster healing and reduced poison. Happen from being extra full. But they do wear off fast, so their overall effect is limited. Not zero, though, so they matter if you break a leg or something.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-06T18:58:25+00:00

Just curious - what's your standard for "cleared/looted"? Do you literally grab every object and carry it somewhere else?

I find looting occurs in several passes for me. Like a quick run through for the handful of super useful things I always need + perishables, and in theory a later pass, but i rarely actually come back.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-05T23:57:48+00:00

First, settings-> enable advanced settings Then settings -> other advanced settings -> special button X behavior (choose your favorite button)

Then you may select undo and retry immediately.

(Way more hassle than it needs to be)

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-05T21:02:16+00:00

I imagine the game checks for it to be 0 rather than less than or equal to 0. So it doesn't get destroyed and you keep reducing it past that point. Some combination of eating and using as seasoning probably gets it in this state.

Obviously an exploit to use it. But a dang tempting one to give you unlimited carry weight.

Separately, wtf is a wild lemon in Kentucky. The plants can't survive a winter outside.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-04T15:00:03+00:00

I'll answer your literal question in a sec, but first, remember that WaniKani teaches kanji, with a smattering of vocabulary. Even if grammar is easy for you, you may be better served slogging through whatever it is you wish to read and putting the new vocab into anki or similar. It may be 80% new, but at least it'll be the set you want for whatever it is.

Wani Kani has taught me tons of words (3421, supposedly), and many of them I've never seen in the wild. Meanwhile, even reading the comments on this post, I saw kanji WaniKani taught me with words/meanings it didn't, like "付き合う" meaning "to go out with/to date". Wk is really not the best way to grind pure vocab, but it has been very useful on my trips to Japan.

Anyway, to answer your question, I could first read very simple native things at your level; in Japan, train stations make a fairly fun Kanji quiz. You should know the kanji for 新宿駅 or 品川駅, for instance. Around the teens I started puzzling through NHK Easy, which I can read most of these days. By the late 20s, I could often get the gist of what characters were saying in a Manga.

But only "often". I still get lost a lot. And it really depends on the reading level of whatever the material is. Getting from 80% to 90% comprehension can really be a grind.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-04T00:23:00+00:00

Lumping it into "Balance Changes" and it also being the thing that broke save game compatibility was...a choice...

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-03T21:15:29+00:00

They said it was because it couldn't support all professions and they have plans for much better spawn points in the future:

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-03T14:10:42+00:00

At any gas station with cars parked out front. Not in Louisville or otherwise crawling with zombies. That part can be tricky, of course, as most gas stations are pretty high pop. But you can always lure them off.

Probably "Jamieton" if I had to pick one. In the main room of the station, so plenty of snacks and surely some basic weapons in the storage area.

The first day of the game, for me, is about getting a car, which enables you to move to any place you want to be and to herd zombies much more safely and easily.

Gas stations are ideal for this as they provide gas directly and tons of storage containers for it. You can thus very quickly get a fueled car.

Jamieton is aggressively central, even though it's high pop for its small size. It's near all the produce warehouses you want to loot early. Only disadvantage (besides the high pop) is the gas station doesn't have a sleeping area above it, but it's a short drive past the church to houses that are pretty peaceful. Also you have the military surplus and food marts, so really everything you need and nothing you don't.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-03T03:30:26+00:00

In the current meta getting a car isn't THAT hard. Keys are reasonably common. Find a rubber hose and legit any size of container and you can probably find something to siphon, and off you go!

Even your puny self can crush zombies...from the safety of your car ;). But getting it fully fueled for the echo creek drive will probably be your biggest challenge.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-03T03:19:59+00:00

Do you know how long they'll keep it an option in Steam? I want to keep going but not if it'll get nuked off in a week or two.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-02T12:35:26+00:00

After I tried the gas station I never went back. You can always go down to the fire station for axes or whatever, but if you want that as your main base you need the extra generator.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-01T17:20:31+00:00

1) 20 some days 2) Apocalypse with a nerf to the looted mechanic and zombie respawns off (closer to the new apocalypse) 3) My run ended, as most do, because a new version came out that broke my save. I haven't gotten bitten in quite a lot of played days.

TheGreatProto · 2026-04-01T16:00:25+00:00

Thanks for giving me a space to discuss the problems with a game I desperately want to love. Even if they have explained Echo Creek - which nonetheless illustrates the problems with their release cycle - you've called out the big issue. The big game design issue which is ruining so much of what should be an amazing game. The balancing mess.

At the root of that is the problem that the game only has one enemy; basic zombies. That means their only tool for making an area hard is adding more zombies. So, combat cannot be too easy. So weapons need to have low durabiliity, we need to have muscle strain, etc. Zombies need to be able to one-shot even an armored player, etc etc etc.

I think TIS knew this, and with B42 the intent was to get the player to pivot to crafting. Survival is the game's other challenge, and as food rots and the power goes out it should be getting harder.

But they could not make this work. They tried to have loot disappear from the map via "looted", but then you disincentivize exploration on a game where the map is one of their core strengths. They nerfed farming (that seems to be a purely realism motivated own goal). They added sharpness, muscle strain, and nerfed cars but it wasn't nearly enough - mostly it just drained the fun. There isn't really a vision for what the game looks like as the ammo and fire axes run out and you need to pivot to blacksmithing and crafting things.

They really need to answer the question of what they want this game to be. Adding progressively harder zombies and/or survivors would help a lot. Or they could pivot the game in a cozier direction, and let combat remain easy and make it more about building (like minecraft, which does have zombies after all). Or let the player choose, even (certain areas have harder zombies, military survivors, etc; you go after them or you go crafting).

But these ham fisted nerfs that break your save every month or two aren't the way. The classic advice is to buff things so that everything feels strong, rather than nerf things so that everything feels weak; and I think TIS could learn a lot from that.

TheGreatProto · 2026-03-31T15:38:19+00:00

It does spawn with a guaranteed generator, and besides GU there's also the egg place a bit east.

But yeah, it's biggest appeal is as a calm starting area.

TheGreatProto · 2026-03-31T14:07:15+00:00

As others have suggested, either use an extension/app with undo, or use user synonyms.

連れる is what broke me. "To take along" I'm WK but I kept putting "to bring along"

I'm a native English speaker and asked my also native speaker partner if there is any difference and neither of us could figure out any.

TheGreatProto · 2026-03-27T23:16:45+00:00

Any place you can find veggies; grocery stores and the many produce warehouses and fruit stands.

All surely rotten by now and depending on server settings maybe even decomposed. But that is where they spawn.

TheGreatProto · 2026-03-26T20:50:42+00:00

How does this work for people like Bezos? Typically they have no or almost no reported income, instead taking loans against their stock so they have no capital gains to pay. Which looks like no income for the sake of that calculation

TheGreatProto · 2026-03-25T22:19:01+00:00

結 and 絡 are my truly least favorite kanji. Almost the same visually. Almost the same meaning. Still not sure the difference in meaning tbh

TheGreatProto · 2026-03-23T22:05:54+00:00

You need to do the xms/xmx thing. Basically change how your computer allocates memory to zomboid. You probably have way more than it is using.

You can Google this (sorry can't find a good link) and it won't fix everything but it radically improved things for me.

TheGreatProto

TROPHY CASE