User:GrayBeard Actual/Sandbox/GrayBeards Survival Guide

03:58, 7 April 2017 (UTC) Draft

Overview


There is already a large number of guides available for the new player and most are very information-dense and some are dated and in need of work, so I thought I would throw out a basic, get-to-the-point guide on how I survive.

For a bit of clarification; survival is something I do in early-game, at lower levels. At a certain point, it is no longer survival—it becomes thriving. Personally, I break my game phases out like this:


 * 1) Very-Early-Game is anything before obtaining a crossbow. My sole mission during this phase is to obtain a crossbow.
 * 2) Early-Game is anything before I have obtained Concrete Mixing (Perk), at which point I begin building bases
 * 3) Mid-Game is after I have settled in a primary base or crafting station; what I call a small structure made primarily to craft and store items
 * 4) Late-Game is after having built a kill tower

The sections below are ordered by importance and/or by how late in the game they are necessary. For example, you need to worry about shelter before you worry about heat.

This guide is effective as of A15.2.

Food

 * Prioritize foods that boost Wellness
 * Gather Goldenrod Flower early and often
 * Obtain a Cooking Pot as soon as possible to make Goldenrod Tea
 * Keep a full stack of goldenrod tea in your pack at all times
 * Use Painkillers to drink more goldenrod tea (painkillers increase Thirst)
 * Eat Charred Meat as a priority. It increases thirst, allowing you to drink more goldenrod tea
 * Boiled eggs make acceptable travel food but are tedious (low fullness; need many to fill you up)
 * Blueberry Pie is the best travel food (but really requires Farming to be sustainable)
 * Eating foods to counter environmental buffs such as overheating and hypothermia is temporary and less preferable to appropriate clothing

Combat

 * At least through early-game, use only ranged weapons and keep a safe distance
 * Carry a pistol in your belt (and only use it for emergencies)
 * Firearms draw unnecessary attention. Use primitive weapons (bow or crossbow) as often as possible
 * Continue walking backward while fighting multiple zombies. They'll line up nicely in front of you.
 * Zombies walking uphill move unpredictably, making headshots more difficult.
 * The AK sucks as a weapon

Shelter
Some things to understand about zombies and doors:
 * Police stations offer great protection
 * Zombies can still be confused by a player's elevation (but they are learning to use stairs to solve that problem)
 * 1) Zombies prioritize doors when attacking structures (often even if there is an opening or two stacked windows next to it)
 * 2) Zombies (currently) don't recognize wooden frames as a weak point in a structure
 * 3) Therefore, wooden frames are a good way to close entrances of POIs while inside (note; they can see through the frames, just as a player can)

Clothing

 * Any helmet is better than no helmet at all and most helmets are better than any hat
 * Two standard pieces of clothing always with me are an Animal Hide Poncho and a Leather Duster — one for cooling and one for warming, respectively
 * I keep one of the above on my player and the other in the top-left box of my pack. When it's time to switch, I hit the "B" on my keyboard and shift-click the top-left box to automatically (and quickly) swap the two
 * Never wear red clothing. It's too visible to other players
 * Military clothing is better than regular clothing

Heat
Understand the Heatmap


 * A single one of the following can run indefinitely without triggering a Screamer
 * Campfire
 * Forge
 * Chemistry Station
 * In addition to one of the above, any combination of two of the following items can also run at the same time (for three total items) without triggering a screamer:
 * Cement Mixer
 * Workbench
 * Run as much as possible, as often as possible. Crafting items = XP = Levelup!