It's kind of funny that our hardened survivor kind of act like babies cause they forget a zombie exists just because they haven't seen it for 5 seconds, like a little baby with no concept of object permanence
nah just think of them trying to calm down when they turn around. “Okay.. I can do this. I can DO THIS! *turns around* oh hell no *turns around again* okay. this time for sure *visibly shaking* I can do this! *turns and kills zombie* phew.”
Cowardly is top tier since it helps you to notice zombies quickier in you vecinity. When you are somehow brave or insensitive, and enter a close space or wander at night, been cowardly is a bless because you can spot those silent ninjas zombies...
One time I was filling up my car at a gas station. I thought the area was clear. Then the panic symbol appeared on my screen. That was the only sign of danger. Needless to say I dropped that gas hose and drew my weapon!
Did you ever try that build in the old days? Before sprinting was added? Character speed was applied to your jogging speed instead, and had a notably greater level of scaling. You could move ridiculously fast, with no trip risk, and far far less exertion. Could basically duck and weave though hordes all day. The penalty however, is that you'd never be able to sleep ever again. ^ ^;
Huh, don't know why I never considered taking Cowardly for a long-term character despite knowing about the panic reduction over time. Guess the damage reduction was a huge concern for me. Might use it in my builds now, just be a Beta Blocker Bandit in the first couple weeks.
Be advised however. The bonus speed for panic decay doesn't work at all on multiplayer and when doing SP, also remember that if you make another character after your first one dies you actually keep all progress towards the sanity decay speed increase. This means brave is incredibly good on multiplayer, but cowardly is incredibly good on singleplayer. Though, cowardly mixed with agoraphobia or claustrophobia and hemophobia is great if you grab adrenaline junkie due to the fact that in SP, you get a nice speed boost that allows you to walk very quickly even when encumbered. In SP it's also really good because those traits stop mattering nearly as much since finding newspapers as a renewable resources is easy to lose stress and if you already took smoker, you can just simply smoke to clear out your stress since the stress from being bloody is a slow gain. I recently made a character that was a using this build and he was claustrophobic but built to be a god tier forager, brawler and fisherman and I kept a 20 man fortpretty well stocked with fish and was able to just cut down tree lines easily due to having a bonus to maint. High hunger, high thirst, prone to illness and weak stomach all stacked together to give me an assload of points.
@@grimjudgment6527 -cowardly mixed with agoraphobia or claustrophobia and hemophobia is great if you grab adrenaline junkie due to the fact that in SP, you get a nice speed boost that allows you to walk very quickly- Yeah yeah in theory but in practice it's a real pain, even with the smoking trait. I hope that beginners will not follow your advice
Your character will suck in combat from day 1 no matter what you do. You don't have your combat skills leveled up, you don't have great weapons available, zombies are not slowed down by decomposition yet, panic is at the peak highest and you don't have any way to reduce tiredness through medication/food. Whether you take brave, no trait or cowardly, combat at the start of the game will be the most difficult and slowly get easier. For that reason you might argue Brave is good as it makes early on combat slightly easier and helps with gun handling, problem is experienced players won't die to anything early on even with Cowardly and even if they do, restarting after losing 2 week character is less painful than restarting after losing 4 month character... Anything that makes you safer the longer you survive are more valuable than the traits/skills that help you only early on.
@@Laireso Pretty much. This is why I will sometimes walk into a multiplayer server with 0 strength, 0 fitness as a herbalist Park ranger cook gardener, hunter, scout with eagle eye. You need to take a lot of negatives for it but it makes your foraging such a beat of a skill ASAP and makes you permanently better at it than anyone else can by modifying your search range that wheb you hit level 10, you can forage in the looted cities and just come back with guns, duct tape and other valuable resources and people will be amazed at how OP the current foraging system can be. I could even find enough veggies to start farming ASAP too. To be fair though, I oftentimes take a strong, fit burglar and just wreck the early game since the only thing that I always hate in multiplayer is the 10 fitness 10 strength grind. (But having 10 in axes, 10 strength, and 10 maint will make it so that you will be such a monster with a pickaxe that you'll absolutely SLAUGHTER, and you'll be able to chop down forests just by spamming stone axes at them.)
Story of my PZ life. Taking Adrenaline Junkie along with Cowardly will help a lot early in the game but the cost is a bit hefty. Plus, if you survive long enough Adrenaline Junkie will slowly become useless since you’ll rarely get panicked. But while it lasts, it’s pretty nice to have on panicky characters. The 8 point cost is ridiculous though.
I believe people want you to compare them BECAUSE they have the opposite effect. They want to know how much more, or less it takes to make them panic when they take the traits, compared to normal.
i honestly didnt know you get more panicked when a zombie comes behind you, and also when you keep looking on your back your panic increases. This game is astonishingly realistic
Hahahaha how is it realistic to get panicked if you spin in place and look at them but if you just ignore a fucking horde of zombies out of your view you don't care
@@MrRafagigapr Probably for the same reason people afraid of heights are better off if they dont look down and try and not pay too much mind to how high they are, and just focusing on what they are doing. Looking at the source of your fear, tends to increase it. If you arent looking at the zombies you can try and focus on what you are doing and not let their presence be as overwhelming, etc. I agree its shaky logic, but there is some debatable sense to it.
@@jaydenshepard7928 I compare it to something chasing you. If you know your being chased it’s scary and if you look behind you and that thing is gaining on you your gonna panic even more.
As far as I know lucky ups the loot spawn chance by 10% and unlucky by -10% in my case I did a bit of a zombie purge in Louisville with lucky and Britas weapon pack and I got quite a few pistols with ammo on zombie bodies that without the perk are less common also I think for multiplayer it only counts for the person with the trait who opens the container for the first time so only one guy needs the perk the rest can take the free points from unlucky if you want to min max
I believe Lucky characters can also see loot other characters won't be able to see. Like how organized characters can use more space than a regular character.
As a new player, Brave is a godsend since it's not like I'll live past the first three days anyway. I feel like it's a good warmup trait that helps with actually surviving through the first few months until I actually know what the hell I'm doing so that I can slap on Cowardly stress-free. Also, fuck Claustrophobia. Somehow I just cannot ever find a house open enough to let me sleep in it and get rid of Tired, inevitably contributing to my demise.
I take cowardly all the time to be honest. My character is almost always operating at Max Panic all the time that I'm quite used to it and survive longterm as such just fine.
Hey man think you could do a vid on the smoker trait, because I feel like the devs are trying to nerf it by making cigarettes, matches and lighters rarer to spawn
@@sopaipillasss that's the thing it feels like they tried to nerf smoker by making harder to find cigarettes, but it isn't enough a better nerf would have been reducing the points it gives
@@carlosperalta5892 I feel like making it 10% chance to not do something because they would be like "I just need a smoke right now..." would be good? Or sometimes stopping in the middle of something to smoke, it would be perfect, and buffing the points making it a high risk high reward kinda thing, wouldn't you think?
I always go with Brave and Cop to play with guns considering panic reduces your accuracy so much; but this might make me reconsider to taking Cowardly instead. If I manage how panic builds up (EI: keeping the zombies in my sight) and use beta blockers, having keen hearing would really help out long term. By the time I have an arsenal of guns anyway it's been about a month, so maybe the panic reduction won't make it too bad to use guns with cowardly. I imagine shotgunning a huge horde or trying to breach louisville 1-2 months in may be unfeasible even with beta blockers though with the amount of zombies. We'll have to see it. Thanks!
Ooh, nice. Only been seeing your content for a week or two but it's really starting to grow on me, I'm quite excited to hear your thoughts and see some numbers on this one. I've heard panic (panik!!) has some interesting effects - messing with your crit chance, damage, push strength and speed.. Using the last of my data to post this comment.. I'll check out this vid before I play next, cheers! Hope you and yours have a merry Christmas and all the rest 🙏
You really do have to weigh out the options there. Brave or beta blockers is enough. If you are playing on a server that has sleep turned off, drinking some alcohol also stops panic for a bit.
@@inferjus9962 I use veteran in almost all my runs and I can tell you, not being panicked is the best thing ever, you're literally a zombie killing machine
Any of what I like to call the "MC" roles (burglar, veteran, cop, etc.) are not good whatsoever and you're better off either going a helpful profession (carpenter, electrician) or maintenance guy. Obviously this is if you're going from a min/max gamer standpoint. If you wanna RP go for whatever you please, just know it's fucking garbage. Also veteran is the most useless profession in the game as desensitized doesn't do as advertised and the 2 gun levels you get in the beginning can be easily obtained thru your first shotgun. (got a friend who thinks Veteran really helps in MP bc he shoot zombie durrr, sorry for the rant)
Honestly, I never really noticed a huge difference with having Cowardly... early game I usually only take on up to three zombies due to that being the max I could handle with my equipment/skills. Still though I don't remember shooting over into extreme **Panik** once.
Very well done video once again! The panic pop up values was something I never really investigated myself so this is another great video I will be forwarding constantly! I don't really get why some people are mentioning here that they are interested in cowardly now. That shit sucks hard and you showed it clearly. Long term usually also means being able to fight and fighting groups of up to 20 zombies. Keen Hearing will not save you against these masses and cowardly just unneccesarily cripples you while giving you a laughable +2 points. Thats a never take trait for my permanently. Otherwise this pretty much confirmed why I like brave but also why brave is entirely optional or a "minor quality of life" trait for late game.
MP really changes the ways to deal with it. No sleep means alcohol can be sipped on to completely counter it as long as you don't get yourself drunk. And it turns out fresh characters do gain the panic reduction so it's free points on older servers until they fix that.
Coward + max nimble(Burglar+Gymnast=3) at start is great, I never do that turn and run, but pull max 4 zeds from pack.. ) Also got smoker + Hemophobic so smoking in the middle of battle is casual and fun ^_^ p.s. Also I take Organized + Strong(that mitigates some of stress+panic damage reduction at start), but i've to take all squishy traits as well.. so no chanse to take even 1 hit even from a glass ^_^
Right. The first week is the most important part of the game. The majority of players will never get to take advantage of the desensitization over time because they will just die in the first week.
Be me: Veteran job As much long blunt trait I can get Craft spiked baseball bat and spiked planks Dies after 2-4 days with thousands of kills with only melee
We're also forgetting the holy grail of combat for non-Veterans - Beta Blockers! These things drop like candy from dead zombies. Once you find a single bottle you're set for combat as you can kill more zombies and get more pills
I didn't realize high panic reduced damage, I just thought it made guns harder to use (understandable so) guess I'll just keep taking cowardly and actually use a beta blocker now and again when I go clearing out town
It's funny when my character is like :O when they see a zombie, then :) when they leave his field of view, then immediately back to :O when he sees them again. It's like that Spongebob episode when the officers keep showing Patrick that suspect drawing. 😂 Also, after seeing the video thumbnail, I want to see a moddle mod that actually adds the stonk face. :P
honestly i think brave is still a great pick, i never understood the mentality of "yeah but after 5 months its not as valuable" 1. thats just false, its still very valuable especially against large hordes which are constantly popping in and out of view 2. saying that a trait is bad because after 100 hours of playtime in that save its not as good is a stupid argument... it really makes me think that this kind of thought process is why we see so many people regularly polling that they never get past the first month. 3. brave is a great cheaper alternative to desensitized, rather than take veteran i'd strongly suggest police officer + brave, you get more skills, its cheaper and almost identical for gun builds as at range you're likely never gonna have enough zombies pop into your bubble to cause too much panic with brave... sure its not as good as completely removing panic but its not much different at all. there is a HUGE difference between having brave and not having brave, maxing out panic sucks, especially early game because of how bad the fallrate is and max panic cuts your damage in half, more swings per enemy means more endurance loss and soon you're stacking multiple damage altering states that cause groups to be such a nightmare early on, i say take brave and never look back... you can speed up your early game SO easily with brave because day one you can clear fairly large groups of zombies quickly thanks to the lack of damage issues.
Both are good. I weigh early game harder and more important than late game, so I prefer Brave more than Cowardly and Agoraphobic. Claustrophobic is easy to manage even in the early game. One way to think about traits like Brave is that you are paying point to help you live for 3 months. After that, other factors like base and equipment will carry you. Thinking this way will help with your consumer guilt.
The way I see it is that with 0 weapon skill it takes me 3-4 hits to kill a zombie. When fully panicked, it still takes me 3-4 hits to kill a zombie. What exactly do I gain from brave? Nothing. If I start gaining weapon skill the decrease in damage from panic becomes less and less relevant and I can always pop beta blockers if I thought it mattered. At worse I would have to kite zombies away from the nearest medical building before the usage of brave is moot, something like a 10 minute investment to avoid spending 4 trait points. I've recently been playing a weak, cowardly, underweight lumberjack. 0 str means -40% melee damage, max panic is -30% melee damage and underweight is -20% melee damage. You'd think the character would do almost no damage, but it turns out it still only takes 5-6 hits to kill a zombie. Often less with a crit. I think its just another case of the game being very misleading with its numbers making people over react to a debuff.
@@loudradialem5233 Yes, there's enough high damage weapons and tools like beta blockers available at the start that you can ignore panic, and by the time you run out of those your character has already scaled past that amount of damage loss mattering.
For me, Brave is for the new players who are hard to survive more than 3 months in the game, with brave you won't get Panic, that means you won't get accuracy decrease if you use firearms and not getting damage lowing if you use melee, but mostly i use beta lockers to "Be Brave" temporary at the start, if i lucky enough to find it. So after all, when you guys get better at the game, just choose cowardly, 2 free points for later on.
Huh I didn't know that high panic will cause a dps penalty, that is probably why one of my runs with it didn't work out because of the large groups of zombies and my low skill with fighting them
What about comparing stress levels with panic gain? I heard someone say that panic increases more if you're stressed but I hadn't heard of that until now. Surely more people would have mentioned it if it was true? Would be good to compare a control (0 stress), with other states of stress such as "stressed but not moodle", level 1 moodle, and level 4 moodle. Of course your first test would be to compare 0 stress to max stress, and if there's no different then there's no point doing any other tests.
is the panic reduction over time a recent thing they added or has it been ingame cause ive been using become desensitized mod since it wouldnt make sense to survive months and still be panicky about a few zombies
they should fix the panic when facing away, and only when you dont know a zombie is there like seriously, watch your front, ok, a zombie, get scared and then watch back, watch front again, get scared again? when you are clearly knowing its there?
Huh. I never never there was a dps loss with panic. I always liked it for fast running (because I am NOT calm when fighting more than a single zombie lol 😅)
That.. does line up with what I know of PTSD, it's a fairly common symptom/thing apparently. Does a Desensitized (Veteran, specifically) character have *more* nightmares than another character? :o
Hey /v/ro can you tell me how does slow from zombies work? I do sprinter playthroughs and holy shit, trying to get out through the same door some zombies go is a death sentence. At first i thought it was bugged because i couldn't sprint after merely brushing my asscheek against few zeds but sprinters actually heavily affect player movement. Can you give me some insight on that?
Hey what is your take on brave+claustrophobic? From non-debug testing brave seems to have no effect on claustrophobic making the perk combo idea useless, I might aswell use cowardly
@@Retanaru Are you absolutely sure? I have a new character with Brave + Hemophobia, and the panic/stress from not washing off blood seems much reduced from my Cowardly + Hemophobia character
I do wonder how cowardly and brave works on multiplayer servers or just custome games with friends, I imagine no matter what cowardly is bad initially, however most if not all current traits in the negative catagory dont go away after 4 months since the game doesn't register time similarly to how it does in singleplayer, and because I feel like its currently bugged or broken.
If you are going to fight lots of zombies cowardly makes no difference. You would be max panic the whole time anyways. I guess you missed it, but the panic reduction works on servers as long as you don't fast forward time.
@@Wveth possibly, but i am kinda mean sometimes without realizing it. i think what i had in mind when i wrote that was, meta builds are fine and dandy but i don't like to give new players the impression that they have to play *this* or *that* way to do well, and a lot of these meta character builds make the game actually way harder at the start. id say just do you boo
yeah ive been playing this game for years and only in the last few months via mechanics videos like this have i realized just how appealing all the panic giving traits are. once you're consistently able to live for months, assuming thats what you're playing towards, taking your phobics and your cowardlys seems a no-brainer
In my experience it seems to work fine. Surviving a month on my server, and my panic with claustrophobia was much less apparent. It is possible that hosting a server with Host makes it not work properly. I know weight change doesn't work through that hosting method, so it's possible panic doesn't decrease after a month either.
@@Retanaru Tight, I just cleared out an area using a shotgun and from my previous experience the sound I was putting out should have resulted in a never ending horde. Wanted to make sure something fucky wasn't going on.
Is there any way to see the chances of getting injured upon being grabbed by a zombie? Like how you can either push them off of you with a scratch, laceration, bite, or completely untouched
The server I'm on just hit October and a fresh character doesn't get panicked even with cowardly. Seems like fast forwarding on servers doesn't work properly, but its otherwise still free points to take cowardly after a few months.
That is broken and should be changed. I can understand if you've been playing on that server for awhile and earned that desensitization, but a fresh new player can't just join an old world and get free points. Make it tied to your account and how long you've been playing on that server. I haven't played the mp release yet but I'd like to know if some traits are removed with certain server settings like wakeful on a no sleep server.
Now am I big brain or smooth brain when I take cowardly and agoraphobic? Since agoraphobic isn't that bad in like 4 months of a character, will I keep suffering if I take both?
How long do the average games last in zomboid? If cowardly doesnt go away until 4 MONTHS of game days, thats a lot of play time where it is negatively effecting you in exchange for those two points. I mean, watching videos, youtubers treat 100 days as a serious milestone for videos, which is just over 3 months. The way you talk about mitigating it also sounds like a fairly minmax experienced gameplay style, so for someone fairly new to the game, id assume cowardly would hamper them a lot more than say, you.
Wait.. People play the game without adrenaline junkie+ cowardly+ agoraphobic+ hemophobic?! Next thing you're gonna tell me is that people play without smoker...
You're not sure why people would want to compare Brave and Cowardly? As they are opposites? What does that even mean? It should be obvious why people want to see opposite traits be compared.
It's kind of funny that our hardened survivor kind of act like babies cause they forget a zombie exists just because they haven't seen it for 5 seconds, like a little baby with no concept of object permanence
"If I can't see them, they don't exist"
@@Rayven_420 "Oh god they exist"
Turns around again
"wait no they don't"
Turns around again
"Oh god they're REAL"
Panik!
*Turns around*
Calm.
*Turns around again*
Panik!
nah just think of them trying to calm down when they turn around. “Okay.. I can do this. I can DO THIS! *turns around* oh hell no *turns around again* okay. this time for sure *visibly shaking* I can do this! *turns and kills zombie* phew.”
Thank you, I've always been too afraid to try out cowardly.
😆😂🤣
Cowardly + adrenaline junkie = speed
😆 So you must try it for roleplaying reasons, Good Luck
nice joke
I think it suits you
Cowardly is top tier since it helps you to notice zombies quickier in you vecinity. When you are somehow brave or insensitive, and enter a close space or wander at night, been cowardly is a bless because you can spot those silent ninjas zombies...
insensitive?
@@flordelizhawk358 they meant desensitized which eliminates panic from all sources but night terrors.
One time I was filling up my car at a gas station. I thought the area was clear. Then the panic symbol appeared on my screen. That was the only sign of danger. Needless to say I dropped that gas hose and drew my weapon!
@@toweypat spidy sense
adrenaline junky, agorophobia, claustrophobia and cowardly to become discount sonic
soo... Sanic?
@@TheKrislaf No, keemstar!
wait what
oh wait i just realized
Ugandan Knuckles
Did you ever try that build in the old days? Before sprinting was added? Character speed was applied to your jogging speed instead, and had a notably greater level of scaling. You could move ridiculously fast, with no trip risk, and far far less exertion. Could basically duck and weave though hordes all day. The penalty however, is that you'd never be able to sleep ever again. ^ ^;
Huh, don't know why I never considered taking Cowardly for a long-term character despite knowing about the panic reduction over time. Guess the damage reduction was a huge concern for me. Might use it in my builds now, just be a Beta Blocker Bandit in the first couple weeks.
Be advised however. The bonus speed for panic decay doesn't work at all on multiplayer and when doing SP, also remember that if you make another character after your first one dies you actually keep all progress towards the sanity decay speed increase. This means brave is incredibly good on multiplayer, but cowardly is incredibly good on singleplayer.
Though, cowardly mixed with agoraphobia or claustrophobia and hemophobia is great if you grab adrenaline junkie due to the fact that in SP, you get a nice speed boost that allows you to walk very quickly even when encumbered. In SP it's also really good because those traits stop mattering nearly as much since finding newspapers as a renewable resources is easy to lose stress and if you already took smoker, you can just simply smoke to clear out your stress since the stress from being bloody is a slow gain.
I recently made a character that was a using this build and he was claustrophobic but built to be a god tier forager, brawler and fisherman and I kept a 20 man fortpretty well stocked with fish and was able to just cut down tree lines easily due to having a bonus to maint. High hunger, high thirst, prone to illness and weak stomach all stacked together to give me an assload of points.
@@grimjudgment6527 -cowardly mixed with agoraphobia or claustrophobia and hemophobia is great if you grab adrenaline junkie due to the fact that in SP, you get a nice speed boost that allows you to walk very quickly- Yeah yeah in theory but in practice it's a real pain, even with the smoking trait. I hope that beginners will not follow your advice
Your character will suck in combat from day 1 no matter what you do. You don't have your combat skills leveled up, you don't have great weapons available, zombies are not slowed down by decomposition yet, panic is at the peak highest and you don't have any way to reduce tiredness through medication/food. Whether you take brave, no trait or cowardly, combat at the start of the game will be the most difficult and slowly get easier.
For that reason you might argue Brave is good as it makes early on combat slightly easier and helps with gun handling, problem is experienced players won't die to anything early on even with Cowardly and even if they do, restarting after losing 2 week character is less painful than restarting after losing 4 month character... Anything that makes you safer the longer you survive are more valuable than the traits/skills that help you only early on.
@@Laireso Pretty much.
This is why I will sometimes walk into a multiplayer server with 0 strength, 0 fitness as a herbalist Park ranger cook gardener, hunter, scout with eagle eye.
You need to take a lot of negatives for it but it makes your foraging such a beat of a skill ASAP and makes you permanently better at it than anyone else can by modifying your search range that wheb you hit level 10, you can forage in the looted cities and just come back with guns, duct tape and other valuable resources and people will be amazed at how OP the current foraging system can be.
I could even find enough veggies to start farming ASAP too.
To be fair though, I oftentimes take a strong, fit burglar and just wreck the early game since the only thing that I always hate in multiplayer is the 10 fitness 10 strength grind. (But having 10 in axes, 10 strength, and 10 maint will make it so that you will be such a monster with a pickaxe that you'll absolutely SLAUGHTER, and you'll be able to chop down forests just by spamming stone axes at them.)
Or just grab adrenaline junkie
It's not a free points if I die before panic reduction increase😅
Story of my PZ life. Taking Adrenaline Junkie along with Cowardly will help a lot early in the game but the cost is a bit hefty. Plus, if you survive long enough Adrenaline Junkie will slowly become useless since you’ll rarely get panicked. But while it lasts, it’s pretty nice to have on panicky characters. The 8 point cost is ridiculous though.
@@Brocuzgodlocdunfamdogson AJ still will help to get out of hordes quickly, though.
I believe people want you to compare them BECAUSE they have the opposite effect. They want to know how much more, or less it takes to make them panic when they take the traits, compared to normal.
Correct, I want to know hoes much more, unfortunately I don't know any hoes
i honestly didnt know you get more panicked when a zombie comes behind you, and also when you keep looking on your back your panic increases. This game is astonishingly realistic
Hahahaha how is it realistic to get panicked if you spin in place and look at them but if you just ignore a fucking horde of zombies out of your view you don't care
@@MrRafagigapr Lol, yeah thats very true , you should stay panicked when theres a whole horde behind you since you can hear them from behind
@@MrRafagigapr Probably for the same reason people afraid of heights are better off if they dont look down and try and not pay too much mind to how high they are, and just focusing on what they are doing.
Looking at the source of your fear, tends to increase it. If you arent looking at the zombies you can try and focus on what you are doing and not let their presence be as overwhelming, etc.
I agree its shaky logic, but there is some debatable sense to it.
@@jaydenshepard7928 I compare it to something chasing you. If you know your being chased it’s scary and if you look behind you and that thing is gaining on you your gonna panic even more.
I'm newer to Zomboid (
Ey can you test if/how Lucky works on multiplayer servers? Thanks in advance!
This!
I don't think I can answer that within my style of videos. You can only really do it with a code dive, or the devs themselves saying it.
@@Retanaru How could you dash my hopes like this, on Christmas Eve of all nights. But yea fair enough!
As far as I know lucky ups the loot spawn chance by 10% and unlucky by -10% in my case I did a bit of a zombie purge in Louisville with lucky and Britas weapon pack and I got quite a few pistols with ammo on zombie bodies that without the perk are less common also I think for multiplayer it only counts for the person with the trait who opens the container for the first time so only one guy needs the perk the rest can take the free points from unlucky if you want to min max
I believe Lucky characters can also see loot other characters won't be able to see. Like how organized characters can use more space than a regular character.
You really do stand alone in the way you analyze traits and other mechanics and things in the game, that's what i like about this channel.
%100
As a new player, Brave is a godsend since it's not like I'll live past the first three days anyway. I feel like it's a good warmup trait that helps with actually surviving through the first few months until I actually know what the hell I'm doing so that I can slap on Cowardly stress-free.
Also, fuck Claustrophobia. Somehow I just cannot ever find a house open enough to let me sleep in it and get rid of Tired, inevitably contributing to my demise.
I take cowardly all the time to be honest. My character is almost always operating at Max Panic all the time that I'm quite used to it and survive longterm as such just fine.
video is about panic, but learned more about keen hearing than those. great stuff
Hey man think you could do a vid on the smoker trait, because I feel like the devs are trying to nerf it by making cigarettes, matches and lighters rarer to spawn
Another trait discussion is on the list.
Just hit up a gas station. Hundreds of cigarettes in the counters by the cash registers.
it still would be easy points, just read a magazine or something like that
@@sopaipillasss that's the thing it feels like they tried to nerf smoker by making harder to find cigarettes, but it isn't enough a better nerf would have been reducing the points it gives
@@carlosperalta5892 I feel like making it 10% chance to not do something because they would be like "I just need a smoke right now..." would be good? Or sometimes stopping in the middle of something to smoke, it would be perfect, and buffing the points making it a high risk high reward kinda thing, wouldn't you think?
I always go with Brave and Cop to play with guns considering panic reduces your accuracy so much; but this might make me reconsider to taking Cowardly instead. If I manage how panic builds up (EI: keeping the zombies in my sight) and use beta blockers, having keen hearing would really help out long term. By the time I have an arsenal of guns anyway it's been about a month, so maybe the panic reduction won't make it too bad to use guns with cowardly.
I imagine shotgunning a huge horde or trying to breach louisville 1-2 months in may be unfeasible even with beta blockers though with the amount of zombies. We'll have to see it. Thanks!
For that kind of mentality, maybe the veteran fit you most, and it is cheaper
Ooh, nice. Only been seeing your content for a week or two but it's really starting to grow on me, I'm quite excited to hear your thoughts and see some numbers on this one.
I've heard panic (panik!!) has some interesting effects - messing with your crit chance, damage, push strength and speed..
Using the last of my data to post this comment.. I'll check out this vid before I play next, cheers! Hope you and yours have a merry Christmas and all the rest 🙏
Been playing veteran lately for the gun EXP bonuses, seems like it might not really be worth it though missing out on so many "free" points
Veteran is basically the same cost as a police officer with the brave trait.
You really do have to weigh out the options there. Brave or beta blockers is enough. If you are playing on a server that has sleep turned off, drinking some alcohol also stops panic for a bit.
i play with the desensitized mod so vet is pretty much useless
@@inferjus9962 I use veteran in almost all my runs and I can tell you, not being panicked is the best thing ever, you're literally a zombie killing machine
Any of what I like to call the "MC" roles (burglar, veteran, cop, etc.) are not good whatsoever and you're better off either going a helpful profession (carpenter, electrician) or maintenance guy. Obviously this is if you're going from a min/max gamer standpoint. If you wanna RP go for whatever you please, just know it's fucking garbage. Also veteran is the most useless profession in the game as desensitized doesn't do as advertised and the 2 gun levels you get in the beginning can be easily obtained thru your first shotgun.
(got a friend who thinks Veteran really helps in MP bc he shoot zombie durrr, sorry for the rant)
The rear zone is a very small area. Got it.
You are the best. Love the content.
Honestly, I never really noticed a huge difference with having Cowardly... early game I usually only take on up to three zombies due to that being the max I could handle with my equipment/skills. Still though I don't remember shooting over into extreme **Panik** once.
Very well done video once again! The panic pop up values was something I never really investigated myself so this is another great video I will be forwarding constantly!
I don't really get why some people are mentioning here that they are interested in cowardly now. That shit sucks hard and you showed it clearly.
Long term usually also means being able to fight and fighting groups of up to 20 zombies. Keen Hearing will not save you against these masses and cowardly just unneccesarily cripples you while giving you a laughable +2 points. Thats a never take trait for my permanently.
Otherwise this pretty much confirmed why I like brave but also why brave is entirely optional or a "minor quality of life" trait for late game.
MP really changes the ways to deal with it. No sleep means alcohol can be sipped on to completely counter it as long as you don't get yourself drunk.
And it turns out fresh characters do gain the panic reduction so it's free points on older servers until they fix that.
Brave still having much value to save beta blocker early game for something really matter like fighting hordes with shotgun.
not afraid of taking coward... open the door of LV mall... ooh boy
Coward + max nimble(Burglar+Gymnast=3) at start is great, I never do that turn and run, but pull max 4 zeds from pack.. ) Also got smoker + Hemophobic so smoking in the middle of battle is casual and fun ^_^ p.s. Also I take Organized + Strong(that mitigates some of stress+panic damage reduction at start), but i've to take all squishy traits as well.. so no chanse to take even 1 hit even from a glass ^_^
Hmm the more you know. I had no clue how panic worked O.o Crazy how you can punish yourself by outranging the zombies.
Cowardly hurts early game
Right. The first week is the most important part of the game. The majority of players will never get to take advantage of the desensitization over time because they will just die in the first week.
I didn't know panic decreased over time. I'll have to try and not die more now
Be me:
Veteran job
As much long blunt trait I can get
Craft spiked baseball bat and spiked planks
Dies after 2-4 days with thousands of kills with only melee
Bold of you to assume i will live for more then a week.
Can you breakdown aiming? Every gun on different distances with different skill? What should be picked with different skill level?
This was extremely educational. Holy shit
We're also forgetting the holy grail of combat for non-Veterans - Beta Blockers! These things drop like candy from dead zombies. Once you find a single bottle you're set for combat as you can kill more zombies and get more pills
Someone make a note of that man's bravery.
I didn't realize high panic reduced damage, I just thought it made guns harder to use (understandable so) guess I'll just keep taking cowardly and actually use a beta blocker now and again when I go clearing out town
It's funny when my character is like :O when they see a zombie, then :) when they leave his field of view, then immediately back to :O when he sees them again. It's like that Spongebob episode when the officers keep showing Patrick that suspect drawing. 😂
Also, after seeing the video thumbnail, I want to see a moddle mod that actually adds the stonk face. :P
Toss adreniline junky onto panic and you can moon walk faster than sprinters. :)
kinda wish there was a Cool headed type of panic resistance where it stops or reduces sharp uptakes of panic, or throttles panic generation
You gain that naturally over the first 4 months. Significant panic reduction speed by the end of month 4.
Can you make a indepth video on the lucky trait and it's effects when taken in multiplayer.
@2:24 ... or you simply combine cowardly and all the "negative" panic traits combined with adrenaline junkie.
I like how no one says anything about him miss spelling panic
its not misspelling
its german spelling
Panik
honestly i think brave is still a great pick, i never understood the mentality of "yeah but after 5 months its not as valuable" 1. thats just false, its still very valuable especially against large hordes which are constantly popping in and out of view
2. saying that a trait is bad because after 100 hours of playtime in that save its not as good is a stupid argument... it really makes me think that this kind of thought process is why we see so many people regularly polling that they never get past the first month.
3. brave is a great cheaper alternative to desensitized, rather than take veteran i'd strongly suggest police officer + brave, you get more skills, its cheaper and almost identical for gun builds as at range you're likely never gonna have enough zombies pop into your bubble to cause too much panic with brave... sure its not as good as completely removing panic but its not much different at all.
there is a HUGE difference between having brave and not having brave, maxing out panic sucks, especially early game because of how bad the fallrate is and max panic cuts your damage in half, more swings per enemy means more endurance loss and soon you're stacking multiple damage altering states that cause groups to be such a nightmare early on, i say take brave and never look back... you can speed up your early game SO easily with brave because day one you can clear fairly large groups of zombies quickly thanks to the lack of damage issues.
Face your fears...
Great content man
I remember when Panic didn't do anything, so Cowardly was considered free points.
Both are good. I weigh early game harder and more important than late game, so I prefer Brave more than Cowardly and Agoraphobic. Claustrophobic is easy to manage even in the early game.
One way to think about traits like Brave is that you are paying point to help you live for 3 months. After that, other factors like base and equipment will carry you. Thinking this way will help with your consumer guilt.
The way I see it is that with 0 weapon skill it takes me 3-4 hits to kill a zombie. When fully panicked, it still takes me 3-4 hits to kill a zombie. What exactly do I gain from brave? Nothing. If I start gaining weapon skill the decrease in damage from panic becomes less and less relevant and I can always pop beta blockers if I thought it mattered. At worse I would have to kite zombies away from the nearest medical building before the usage of brave is moot, something like a 10 minute investment to avoid spending 4 trait points.
I've recently been playing a weak, cowardly, underweight lumberjack. 0 str means -40% melee damage, max panic is -30% melee damage and underweight is -20% melee damage. You'd think the character would do almost no damage, but it turns out it still only takes 5-6 hits to kill a zombie. Often less with a crit.
I think its just another case of the game being very misleading with its numbers making people over react to a debuff.
@@Retanaru Supposedly, Panic decreases melee damage. So, is it not true?
@@loudradialem5233 It does, but there's more to it than just doing 30% less damage.
@@Retanaru So, it gives a factor or 0.7, but there are many factors modifying the damage, to the point that panic in unnoticeable?
@@loudradialem5233 Yes, there's enough high damage weapons and tools like beta blockers available at the start that you can ignore panic, and by the time you run out of those your character has already scaled past that amount of damage loss mattering.
For me, Brave is for the new players who are hard to survive more than 3 months in the game, with brave you won't get Panic, that means you won't get accuracy decrease if you use firearms and not getting damage lowing if you use melee, but mostly i use beta lockers to "Be Brave" temporary at the start, if i lucky enough to find it. So after all, when you guys get better at the game, just choose cowardly, 2 free points for later on.
Huh I didn't know that high panic will cause a dps penalty, that is probably why one of my runs with it didn't work out because of the large groups of zombies and my low skill with fighting them
What about comparing stress levels with panic gain? I heard someone say that panic increases more if you're stressed but I hadn't heard of that until now. Surely more people would have mentioned it if it was true? Would be good to compare a control (0 stress), with other states of stress such as "stressed but not moodle", level 1 moodle, and level 4 moodle.
Of course your first test would be to compare 0 stress to max stress, and if there's no different then there's no point doing any other tests.
*laughes in Desensitized*
Can't take any of the panic traits for extra points though.
is the panic reduction over time a recent thing they added or has it been ingame cause ive been using become desensitized mod since it wouldnt make sense to survive months and still be panicky about a few zombies
It's been in game for quite a while.
merry christmas !
Brave only seems useful for if you wanna use guns early in your run.
they should fix the panic when facing away, and only when you dont know a zombie is there
like seriously, watch your front, ok, a zombie, get scared
and then watch back, watch front again, get scared again? when you are clearly knowing its there?
Huh. I never never there was a dps loss with panic. I always liked it for fast running (because I am NOT calm when fighting more than a single zombie lol 😅)
i heard there is bug on mp where your panic reduction doesn't grow, so that's the reason i pick brave here
Question, could my character develop desensitization to fighting hordes of zombies if I survive long enough? (without vet or brave trait)
Nope. There is a mod that allows for it called dynamic traits, but beware that mod makes catching a cold lethal if you can't lose it quickly.
thanks duder
I am not sure if its intended or a bug maybe someone can answer. Is it normal to suffer nightmares (aka panic and stress) with desensitized?
Yeah, desensitized doesn't stop night terrors
That.. does line up with what I know of PTSD, it's a fairly common symptom/thing apparently. Does a Desensitized (Veteran, specifically) character have *more* nightmares than another character? :o
I've never tested it but it doesnt seem like it to me
wish I got 20 from behind
Hey /v/ro can you tell me how does slow from zombies work? I do sprinter playthroughs and holy shit, trying to get out through the same door some zombies go is a death sentence. At first i thought it was bugged because i couldn't sprint after merely brushing my asscheek against few zeds but sprinters actually heavily affect player movement. Can you give me some insight on that?
Heh, that's cute
*chugs down damn near half a bottle of beta blockers*
In servers with sleep turned off alcohol is a great panic reducer.
Hey what is your take on brave+claustrophobic?
From non-debug testing brave seems to have no effect on claustrophobic making the perk combo idea useless, I might aswell use cowardly
Brave only effects zombie panic.
@@Retanaru Are you absolutely sure? I have a new character with Brave + Hemophobia, and the panic/stress from not washing off blood seems much reduced from my Cowardly + Hemophobia character
I do wonder how cowardly and brave works on multiplayer servers or just custome games with friends, I imagine no matter what cowardly is bad initially, however most if not all current traits in the negative catagory dont go away after 4 months since the game doesn't register time similarly to how it does in singleplayer, and because I feel like its currently bugged or broken.
If you are going to fight lots of zombies cowardly makes no difference. You would be max panic the whole time anyways. I guess you missed it, but the panic reduction works on servers as long as you don't fast forward time.
I don't even play the game
TIL cowardly is free points
id rather take brave and not deal with the headache, not everything is about min maxing every single aspect of your character
Nobody said it was, but this isn't even really minmaxing. Seems like you had a bad day when you wrote this.
@@Wveth possibly, but i am kinda mean sometimes without realizing it.
i think what i had in mind when i wrote that was, meta builds are fine and dandy but i don't like to give new players the impression that they have to play *this* or *that* way to do well, and a lot of these meta character builds make the game actually way harder at the start. id say just do you boo
yeah ive been playing this game for years and only in the last few months via mechanics videos like this have i realized just how appealing all the panic giving traits are. once you're consistently able to live for months, assuming thats what you're playing towards, taking your phobics and your cowardlys seems a no-brainer
Was it a bug that panic doesn't decrease through time in multiplayer? If yes, is it fixed now? I haven't checked the new changelogs yet
In my experience it seems to work fine. Surviving a month on my server, and my panic with claustrophobia was much less apparent. It is possible that hosting a server with Host makes it not work properly. I know weight change doesn't work through that hosting method, so it's possible panic doesn't decrease after a month either.
I'm still playing on a dedicated server to test this out, but we can't fast forward so it'll be a long time.
Why is your profile picture Nazi Mae?
Server hit October and its definitely working even though I just made a fresh character. Seems like fast forwarding is just bugged on the server.
Brave also helps in the long term if you fight a large amount with your guns. Panic really disappoints your aiming
I spot your Enthumesis profilie pic fellow elona+ player
Sssshhh
is there a way to show sound radius with the dwbug mode?
Mr. Retanaru do you know if they changed how loud any of the guns are thank u :)
All the guns aside from the m36 had their sound range reduced.
@@Retanaru Tight, I just cleared out an area using a shotgun and from my previous experience the sound I was putting out should have resulted in a never ending horde. Wanted to make sure something fucky wasn't going on.
can you figure out what lucky and unlucky does?
Is there any way to see the chances of getting injured upon being grabbed by a zombie? Like how you can either push them off of you with a scratch, laceration, bite, or completely untouched
Sounds line Brave is still pretty good on multiplayer servers though since you said that the panic reduction over time doesn't apply on them right?
The server I'm on just hit October and a fresh character doesn't get panicked even with cowardly. Seems like fast forwarding on servers doesn't work properly, but its otherwise still free points to take cowardly after a few months.
That is broken and should be changed. I can understand if you've been playing on that server for awhile and earned that desensitization, but a fresh new player can't just join an old world and get free points. Make it tied to your account and how long you've been playing on that server. I haven't played the mp release yet but I'd like to know if some traits are removed with certain server settings like wakeful on a no sleep server.
What does Panic due besides reduce accuracy with range?
It reduces your damage a bit.
@@Retanaru rad
Now am I big brain or smooth brain when I take cowardly and agoraphobic? Since agoraphobic isn't that bad in like 4 months of a character, will I keep suffering if I take both?
Just pick veteran and your ok
how much does panic reduce melee damage?
How long do the average games last in zomboid? If cowardly doesnt go away until 4 MONTHS of game days, thats a lot of play time where it is negatively effecting you in exchange for those two points. I mean, watching videos, youtubers treat 100 days as a serious milestone for videos, which is just over 3 months. The way you talk about mitigating it also sounds like a fairly minmax experienced gameplay style, so for someone fairly new to the game, id assume cowardly would hamper them a lot more than say, you.
Do hard of hearing or deaf affect this?
Wait.. People play the game without adrenaline junkie+ cowardly+ agoraphobic+ hemophobic?! Next thing you're gonna tell me is that people play without smoker...
Smoker should always be taken imo
Interesting
Does the panic reduce overtime on multiplayer?
You're not sure why people would want to compare Brave and Cowardly? As they are opposites? What does that even mean? It should be obvious why people want to see opposite traits be compared.
What? What is that max panic per day???
Calm
Do you miss me or are you scared?
Grub
Panic supposedly affects aim but the wiki states otherwise, are you sure it affects aim?
🫨🕴️