Otherwise Id compare this game to Dark Souls. My coworker said "You like Terraria, youll like this" HAHAH I had such a jump scare within the first 10 seconds. This game is amazing
The simple fact of having no respawn makes the game instantly better, now you can do stuff instead of having to clear 50 zombies per day even though you had just cleared your area
You can just set the respawn unseen hours up to like 3-5 days or whatever, then at least the city center's etc don't get totally devoid of life over time but your safehouse is always clear cause there's almost never a time you're away for that long. Personally I like the respawn hours, if you turn respawns off you take away any and all reasons to use barricades once an initial clear is done, which doesn't seem right to me.
@@FlaxeMusic Zombies still migrate towards empty cell though, with respawn off it makes you feel like you are actully clearing out the area even while zombies still are present because they roam around
@@sylvananas7923 yeah I love turning off respawn its much more realistic that way once they add npcs im planning on playing on the same world for multiple in game years even if I end up dieing and have to make new characters and it would make sense after say about 5 or so years the zombies would be mostly wiped out by the survivors exept the odd zombie that got lost in the woods or is roaming the high way
@@craigmarsh7448 I play the game for realism not difficulty i try to make the sandbox settings as realistic as possible but I guess thats the cool thing about this game you can customize it for the exact play style you want
@@sylvananas7923 True but a problem, at least for me, is the game doesn't differentiate between respawn and spawn rates and spawning stops once you enter a cell. so if you spawn in like WestPoint and enter all the cells in that part of the map pretty early on the town will never reach a peak pop and zombie's aren't gonna migrate from the barren woods so you don't really get that buildup
as a new player, i started my first game. Not touching the sandbox because I didn't know what to expect. I spawned in a house with TV already on at max volume and literally got surrounded in less than a minute. 10/10
Whats always fun is to spawn in an empty house (no loot) with max fog and a minimum of 30 zombies scattered around you that can see through fog without issue, but you can't. And running zombies was turned on.....
I set the population to insane but turn off zombie spawning. That way the game is still brutally hard but you can gradually clear out the area around your base
@@MoonArtyre I play all my games with insane population. it works really well. The fun is to clear the city block by block. sometimes youll need to live the woods for a few weeks until you have somewhere safe to stay. Just dont try sprinters with insane population, that wont end well.
@@mauriciofreitas3384 Im doing a series where i play high population and sprinters and that was near suicidal. Dont even try it without a crossbow or archery mod.
this does look good but i wouldnt do this personally because it makes the difficulty curve way too massive imo, ok maybe only a couple of times. like at the beginning its going to be hard but that difficulty curve is going to make it where you're a god by the end, usually games counter this by scaling the difficulty of their game, which is what project zomboid does originally
I always turn respawning off because I like having each kill hold some significance to the overall game. Every zombie at game start in the world? That's it. If I go several years into a game and in the meantime killing thousands of zombies, eventually the world is gonna be near-barren... My choices had an impact on the world. This is another reason why I'm excited to see survivors NPCs added... I wanna see the world go from a zombie-infested hellhole to humanity reclaiming Kentucky and zombies becoming a rarity.
I can't wait until I can make a world where if you survive the winter, zombies die off/become slower and what you really have to worry about is the animals, other survivors, and the bitter cold
@@Totally_Bonkers there's more than enough zombies to go around even with vanilla settings, that and the fact that travelling from town to town is a pretty big part of this game. I think it would only be a problem if the player decides to clear out massive parts of town using only 1 molotov, which is a very cheap and effective way to clear a loot area, but that's if you don't include Louisville which could easily take you 5 months of non stop clearing to eventually rid the place of zombies
For new players struggling at the beginning: An important strat you need to know is kiting. No one expects you to clear out an entire area before looting, the easiest thing to do is to shout and gather up as many zeds as possible (assuming vanilla settings). Walk in circles around your horde as tight as you can without being grabbed. Once you’re satisfied with the amount of zeds you’ve collected, start leading them away from the POI you’re trying to loot while occasionally doing circles to tighten the horde (while walking zeds will tend to separate and lag behind one another). Now you should be trying to lead them either into the woods, around a tight corner of a building, or through a house (don’t attempt the house strat if you’re not comfortable with the mechanics). As soon as you reach any of the above mentioned places, perform a short sprint (few seconds) to break line of sight, then crouch and take a wide arc back. If you did it correctly the horde will just shamble in the last direction they saw you before eventually giving up. Congrats, now that original POI is free to loot.
@@KnightK51 Didn’t feel like typing out zombie every time, this comment was long enough already. Same reason I used “POI” instead of “Point/Place of Interest”
While this works, it is also time consuming but does NOT get rid of them permanently, it just shuffles them around. So, you either lead them to an area where you might go next in the future and then you have to deal with twice the numbers ... or you lead them to areas you already cleared, which would be even more annoying. Ok, maybe you play with respawn on and don't mind because the place will be overrun anyway within a few days, but still. I'd rather take the time and kill. This gives you XP, extra loot and practice.
What would be interesting is population accuracy (2-5 zombies for each house). Louisville starting with 75% zombie pop and slowly spreading through the map. Fewer zombies in streets, and more zombies in places like houses and hospitals
This game would be perfect if it started off without infection, imagine living thriving towns but slowly different towns get infected and you hear it in the radio and tv, some people leave large towns to go and help smaller ones while at the end largest town in game is besieged, wouldn't that be an amazing spectable in online, also having possibility to contact survivors by radio in different parts of the map
I tried putting the population to insane, and let me tell you. Even with item spawn of a minigun, I was not able to clear a horde located out of an urban population. These settings you shared are realistic enough for me. Will also give you rally group separation suggestion a try in my next playthrough. Thanks for this!
I always go for insane but with a pop start of 0.1 and a peak at 64 days. You can slowly see the rise of the undead, and you gotta hurry to get all that sweet sweet loot before it's too late. 876 respawn hours and 320 unseen hours with a 0.1 pop respawn per cycle, and you'll never stop fearing the undead, but they won't flood your base as soon as you finish clearing westpoint.
I was on a server with high spawns but not insane and I literally kept getting swarmed instantly on spawn. The wackiest respawn attempt was me instantly being surrounded by a horde in the middle of the woods at a camp site.
If you couldn't clear out an insane pop in an urban area whilst running Brita's weapons (i assume ur using britas since u said minigun), you just suck my guy. Any server using Brita's should have the population locked at insane
Just grind your experience. I don't mean your character I mean your literal experience with the game. I always play on insane pop and now all my characters survive past winter before I get bored and start a new player with a new trait makeup.
If you set the respawn hours to max, the respawn unseen hours to 1 week(168 hours), and the respawn multiplier to 0.1, you should theoretically get 10% zombie population regrowth once per year in every location you *haven't* been to for more than a week. This means it would take 10 in-game years to get full population regrowth, but at least you'd have something to do every now and then besides forage and whatnot. If you play on 1 day = 2 hours or more, you'll effectively never have to deal with a huge horde once you clear out an area, but coupled with migration, you'll still have something to do until your character grows old and dies. Either way, just play around with it, generally keeping Respawn Hours 1000-8000, Unseen Hours from 50-500, and Respawn multiplier 0.1-0.3, and it should add some flavor back into the endgame/"post" game.
Yesss, the amount of customization this game offers is AMAZING. Love trying to set up Day of the Dead, TWD, or 28 Day Zombo settings. An added plus, the devs FULLY support modding, so if you can't quite get the options you want in vanilla, check out the robust modding scene.
I like how you can save and give custom names to the difficulty settings you choose. I got a resident evil difficulty, walking dead one, and the hardest one so far I made is train to Busan difficulty
@@zofuzsc2296 semi easy. All shamblers and only bites turn. Scratches & lacerations are not infectious. Zeds can still overrun and get you if youre not careful
@@zofuzsc2296 put slow walking zombies, amount of zombie x3.5, and that the zombies do not appear again, and also configure that the zombies are explorers so you would have the walking dead style
This is a wonderful explanation. As a server admin, this is invaluable info that I didn't know I needed to know lol Thanks, man. I really appreciate it!
@Asterius That'd be so cool! Add to it random migrating zombie horde events that would have a chance to siege the players defenses, though it would be better if it were time based that way you'd have to survive long enough for the horde to clear away and continue on the migration path.
My favorite settings after gaining a bit of experience: Starting Zombies: 0.5 Population: 1 Peak day: 60 Peak Population: 2 Zombie respawns set to once a week instead of the default every 16h. So you have two months to prep for a huge peak of zombies, if you make it there. The ramp up in zombie count is nice and once you cleared an area, you're good for a few in game days to loot around. Meta events will still attract zombies in "cleared" cells but it's not as bad as 16h respawns.
Unseen hours - I have it set to 168h These settings are great for small servers especially if you have new comers in your group, lets them get the hang of things before you get swarmed by zombies. You can also leave the peak population to default at 1.5 if you dont want the extra zombies come peak day. I prefer to leave some zombie respawns instead of turning them off because zombies are a great source of cloths, threads, lighters, matches and depending on your loot settings (rare or normal) they can be a great source of duffel bags and survival gear. (Knives, bags, leather gloves etc)
I’ve been looking for a video like this! I’ve been playing since 2016, and have been looking to make my play throughs a little more realistic. Thanks buddy 🤘
Personally I do like to keep respawning on, but probably set the time it takes for them to respawn after leaving to a higher number, and/or how many can respawn to a lower number. This means a town won't be overrun again a few days after you've cleared it, but if you don't keep on top of things they'll slowly come back. In the zombie apocalypse, no place is safe forever, so I find that this is more immersive. You have to pick which areas to keep clear. It's housekeeping, basically. Just as you need to weed and water the crops and clear the driveway of saplings, you occasionally need to re-secure your surroundings. The lower respawn settings make it feel less like it's a wasted effort, so you _can_ realistically keep a decently large area safe. Just don't get _too_ comfortable, because even if things look clear, there could always be a few zombies around if you haven't been there in a few days.
I agree. It's a zombie apocalypse and the lore seems to indicate that the whole world must be struggling with it. The longer respawn can simulate zombies migrating from nearby cities as other survivors keep dying and becoming zombies. There is no way a single person can clear an entire town and keep it safe forever in a world wide apocalypse. It just doesn't sound realistic to me.
For years I've eyed this game cause of its depth and simple perspective/graphics. I pirated it on two different occasions about a year apart to try it. First time I was being lazy and thought there is way to much to learn and the UI is a bit odd, gave up at the end of the tutorial. 2nd time I made it past that but did not enjoy the difficulty and learning curve. Finally I bought the game as I was still very interested in the game as it just seems so fun from gameplay I have seen and it was out of Early Access. Still struggled BUT I messed around with stuff more, I watched loads of videos to learn the ins and outs and beginner builds and tips, learning what everything is and what it does conditions and stats wise as well as traits. Watching vids like this to tinker with the games settings. And now I enjoy the game and slowly will up the difficulty as I improve. Its a very rewarding game. I appreciate your video.
More or less my journey, too, without the pirating. It's a game that looks overwhelming and intimidating. It's the only game that gives me a kind of anxiety where you are afraid of even starting a game. At the same time this is very intriguing. Watching videos of guys like AmbigousAmphibian convinced me of the quality of the game so I stuck around with gaps of weeks not touching it. Now it's my first tun where I survive for longer than a week and it's fantastic. I have to admit, though, that I backup my savefiles before starting a session. I am okay with losing a day/session's worth of progress if I screw up but not with losing everything, especially when you die due to things like misclicks or stuff you possibly could not have known.
Riverside is my go to starting place with normal settings. Good coverage to sneak around and loot up. I’d say it’s a great starting area for new players if you don’t want to change the settings.
I love the amount of customizability you have when it comes to scenarios. I like doing weak as hell shamblers with every stat at minimum, but letting peak population be huge to compensate. I think its still always balanced as you can still find the clown car bathroom in any playthrough.
When I first looked at the settings and changed them, it felt like turning the amount down to "less" didn't do much at all. Like it genuinely felt like well, now there are 9 zombies at each crossroad instead of 10. Might've just been my luck though haha. So I found these advanced settings really quick :D
no problem I remember being the same way when I first started and i could barely survive longer than a day so when i figured out these settings i knew i had to share them
It’s always nice to start in a relatively remote part of town only to find three times the population the area should have in Zombies. What is it with the default zombie pop, was there some sort of mega tourist attraction right before the apocalypse?
My hand-wavy headcanon explanation has always been that they are people from surrounding communities trying (and failing) to evacuate to Louisville, where they thought they'd get help/answers. Sadly they all died on the way though and for some reason surrounded my house, lol
I know you're only joking but someone counted the population of zombies in the game using the debug feature and they actually found that the population is literally 3* higher than what it should be. I've had the population set 0.3375 and I've been having a blast with the game ever since.
I just started playing the game and I must say that I like the default amount of zombies at the start. Makes surviving much more satisfying and finding good loot too. Though I most admit that I find there's too many blob like you mentionned here. So I'm definitely going to change that setting and I also completely forgot to put spawning at 0 for a more realistic approach
There is also an option you can turn on that enables certain weapons to hit multiple zombies, that would help with blobs a bit. But use this carefully and preferably with weapons that also have a good knockback
Set population multiplier to 1 Set population start multiplier to 0.6 Set population peak multiplier to 1.7 Peak day : 48 Water shut down 0 to 6 months (water irl would last for years) Electricity shut off : 0 to 2 months And of course turn off all zombies respawn off.
Thanks for the thorough explanation. I was reading threads and nobody described it this well. 👏 I still like the idea of a minimal respawn so I set my respawn hours to 8760, pop peak day 365
I personally like having respawn off. In that way killing any Zombie feels like a little reward in its own way, knowing you have one less of these mfs on the map roaming around to kill you (theoretically you could make killing all zombies your quest) I just like to have that as a sense of progress and reward for putting myself in a risky situation and surviving. Also trying to live in a base will become much much more pleasant and will make you able to focus on other stuff now and then
We are so noob in the game that we set the zombies to only slow shamblers and I think we even adjusted either their memory or hearing and sight. Also, to us part of the fun is to experience more of the traditional Dawn of the Dead/The Walking Dead style zombies so we kept the population as default to compensate the slower moving hordes. And we still struggle from time to time! I do love that the game has all these options exposed to the users. It's very cool and can create greatly different scenarios.
just a head's up, turning respawn off also locks the entire map to your starting respawn multiplier. the peak day multiplier uses the respawn mechanic to repopulate so essentially it has no effect with respawn off
I know you are right about the immediate area you are in, but areas you haven't visited yet don't spawn items in till you visit so it might work the same for zombies? idk im very curious myself
Yeah same. I start muldraugh and I started clearing out the town. Eventually however, my cleared out zones started to fill back up as if I've never went there. 600 Zombie kills in one month down the drain, that's what it feels like. I think a very slow zombie respawn may be fine though? To keep you on edge kinda. A zombie here, a zombie there maybe. But no the game by default just constantly refuels emptied zones.
My personal settings that suit me are: Pop Mult: 0.1 Pop Start: 0.5 Pop Peak: 2.25 Peak Day: 150 I know, really low numbers. But I still experience alarms causing 50-100 zombies. The mall is still absolutely infested. I'm at like 30 days in and 600+ zombie kills, only when I have to. I think it gives the most satisfying experience, personally. I've almost died several times with hordes of 50+ that accumulate out of nowhere
Having just bought the game, your channel has been really helpful to make the game approachable. It basically picks up where the tutorial leaves off. You consistently give good, straight to the point tips and perspective. Thank you. Having played a few rounds and gotten overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies, this is exactly what I was looking for.
You'd have to put redistribution to 0 if you don't want the entire map to spread out its population every time you clear somewhere. It will feel a lot like they are re-spawning because they keep coming until you wipe out the entire map.
@@KS-xd6ql groups of zombies will move around their cell, but will not leave a cell unless something drags them out like a player walking and yelling and giving them time to catch up. If you kill every zombie in a cell, no more will migrate to it unless pulled in by the player or a meta event such as the heli. If you killed every zombie in the south of the map, you would never see another unless you purposefully dragged them down there.
I really wish there was realistic population mod. and by that i mean someone counts every individual house, workplace etc and makes zombies spawns from that info. Have zombies in different outfits at their respective jobs, stuff like that. I also think a proper horde mod would be cool, maybe if too many zombies group up together they start to migrate down highways and stuff (similar to state of decay or something). These are things i wish for, but i dont even know if its possible to mod the AI in zomboid lol
I appreciate this video, I’m just starting off and some other videos I have come across didn’t bring up some points that you have. Which is interesting but none to less I’m trying to learn the game as it’s very immersive and in depth. So thank you
You can also deactivate the grouping of zombies by setting „rally group size“ to zero, it makes it so that all zombies act naturally and they’re spread out randomly, but will still „group“ together without being in an unrealistic spawn cluster. They will still get attracted and accumulated into groups by sounds but the look and realism is better
@@grayglimpse i think it still does, but only in unloaded cells. I have 300 hours and play almost exclusively with respawn off, but pretty huge peak pops compared to my initial, so I’d hope i can tell.
I love this it also makes the game way more realistic if you start at day 0 in a zombie apocalypse you would expect the number of the zombie population to increase as more time goes by
@@themudpit621 but u are not the only human left, even u cant see a single npc where does the shots come from? i like to think the zom pop goes up as survivors get infected but 0.5 at start seems too low tbh
Turning respawn off is meta IMO... it makes the game more realistic. What they DO need to add however is random "roaming hordes" that can come from off the map edges and just wander through the map on a set (random) direction. This would keep the realism factor, without running out of zombies. I know the map is surrounded by a "perimeter" fence, but perhaps it could "fail" at random places after a few months to let these roaming hordes in.
I like respawn off because zombie migration means no area is ever entirely clear - just mostly and until they migrate to fill the gap. It also means I can theoretically clear all of knox county. I may never do it, but knowing it is a possibility makes the game feel better.
I've been looking for a way my friends and I play in a server where zombies don't respawn (it's more realistic for us that way), and this video helped a lot! Now we understand what are those numbers refering to. Thanks you!
Even on my low population run, I still find groups of hundreds of undead, namely in Knox County. I play on Eerie County with the connected Knox County mod. In my experience i’ve mostly cleared Section C of Eerie County, but as I am on about month 7, I see hordes of zombies coming into the rural area from the major cities like Louisville. And as they are set to respawn, these hordes come in seasonal waves to my section of the map as the game tries to fill the empty zones in my area.
I've got a game going right now with population set to 1.0 and peak set to 1.5 (normal) with no respawn. My goal for this playthrough is to kill every zombie on the whole map (besides the ones hiding in the forests). I started in Rosewood I've got 2 months in game time so far, zombies have peaked and I've killed 4,000+ zeds and I'm pretty sure that doesn't even include the hundreds I've burned. Aaaand I'm still in Rosewood lmao.
My preference is to set "unseen respawn" to 72h=3d, respawn to 144h=6d .. 240h=10d, and slow redistribbute, something like respawn time. Making it both worth clearing areas yet not feel bored of just looting at the same area for days without a single zombie in sight.
The population multipliers work a bit differently than you said. In fact, the name of the first setting in the advanced options is a bit misleading since it's a different option entirely from the two that follow. There are actually _two_ multipliers at work here. One of them is static (the one in the first option) and the second is dynamic (the one in the second and third options). These multiply together, so you can go up to a total of 16x population. So if you leave the start and peak at 1.0 and 1.5 respectively, for "normal", the population goes from 1 to 1.5, and for "low" it goes from 0.35 to 0.525. So even at its peak, "low" has about half the zombies you see at the start on "normal".
Why do all multipliers work so weirdly in this game? Like the skill multipliers work weirdly as well where a 150% is like a 3x bonus or something... (I can't even remember xD
@@zwenkwiel816 Another fun one. When reading skill books you can (or could, maybe it's different in build 41?) get multipliers of below 1. iirc they just don't have an effect until they reach 1. Either that or they're the _bonus_ you get. But the way it's displayed makes you think you get half XP for a skill with a 0.5 XP multiplier, which is definitely not the case because then you wouldn't get any XP at all for skills you didn't read books for.
Exactly. I've tried 0.5 for the Initial Population and raised the peak multiplier to 1.8. When it got to the peak day I felt like the world still had very few zombies... Maybe the 0.5 multiplier downgraded the peak? 0.5 x 1.8 = 0.9 (even lower than the vanilla 1.5x peak). I guess if you'd want a low population in the beggining that gets increasingly high till the peak day you'd have to raise the peak number as well. I'll be trying 0.6x for the initial population and 2.8x for the peak day and see what happens. 0,6 x 2,8 = 1,68 (Maybe it's enough to spawn a decent amount of zombies at the peak day?)
I used to be someone who would have turned around and told you to "get gud" but as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that it's less important to be good at the game then it is to have fun with the game. This applies to any game really. Example, in RimWorld I play on Community Builder most of the time. I really don't like it when the game sends me raid after raid after raid, but I still want raids from time to time otherwise I'm basically missing out on half of the game. The game becomes so much better, so much more fun for me, and I've put hundreds and hundreds of more hours into it then I otherwise would have. Same should be true for any game, even Project Zomboid. Adjust the difficulty so it's fun for you. If you're someone who wants the hard core experience and the hopelessness of millions of zombies shambling into your base? Crank that difficulty up! If you're more like me and like to take things slower and struggle to handle large hordes of zombies? Yeah, no shame in turning that difficulty down! Anyway, play the games you want to play at the difficulty you want to play them! Life is too fricken short to worry about something unimportant like that.
Try High (2.0) population with 1.0 start multiplier, but set Rally Group Size to 0, and the game becomes much more managable even on the default population settings (i always play on High pop. settings) because they not spawn in already formed groups, but they can still form hordes if you attract to much zombies on yourself. Count that if you turn respawn off completely, the places can become empty and pretty boring after you clear them out completely, instead i like to set respawn timers high, plus i play with 2 hours long days, that is in itself doubling the respawn times.
I love how customizable the game is. Sometimes I do wish it would add the option to save, for those of us who want to play without fear of losing the world upon death. Ofc u can use backup saves but it takes so long to save like that lol. I usually play with settings similar to this
Go to you c drive => Users => [your name] => Zomboid => Saves , then look for your game and copy/paste the entire folder of your game. Voila, you now have a backup file in case something stupid happens.
These settings are good for new players to get the hang of the game but after you understand the mechanics of efficient zombie killing even the vanilla settings(minus the zombie re-spawn) seem to become too easy. My friend group and I are about to add sprinters into the server just spice things up a bit.
@@spoodle Try custom zombies mod, 10% sprinters, 10% crawlers, 10% play dead. Sometimes you don't see one for days, sometimes a whole group of them gank you. It's really spicy.
really well explained and helpful for players of all levels of experience. Nicely done! PS You were actually wearing pants in this video! Is that a first and only time??
I like the no repsawn ordeal. Im still pretty new to the game myself and ive died a SHIT-TON. I didn't know u could do this until like a week ago on a random video. Im glad u explained it tho cause i wasn't sure how all that worked myself.
Just a quick heads up that turning off zombie respawn breaks the "Peak Population" mechanic and prevents zombies from spawning in to reach that 1.5 peak pop. You're going to have 0.5 population forever.
only in cells you have visited. if you enter a cell you haven't been to before after peak population hours the zombie population in that cell will be 1.5
The only thing I change is the respawn rate from 72.0 to 720 which just means zombies wont respawn for 30 days after you clear an area. Default settings in west point for example, I ended up killing 200+ zombies in the first 7 in-game days and the respawns made the area I was clearing even more populated by the end that it feels like it's impossible to keep up. 30 days feels much better imo and feels like every zombie you kill is helping you progress
If you really wanna feel progress , turn respawn off, that way, every kill truly matters, and to make yourself a focus you can try and kill every zombie on the map
Do you notice an increase in the zombie population with this? From what I understand, if you don't have respawn on, then the population won't increase to meet the level depending on the age of the world
It really depends, like a multi-player server isn't much fun without respawns. Also turned it on in some single player games though. Like if you've survived for months and cleared the whole town around you it can get kind of boring without any zombies so having respawn turned on is fun. By default they only respawn like 10% ever 3 days but only if you haven't visited that cell for some time (default is like 16 hours iirc). So it just means some zombies will respawn but only if you haven't been to an area for some time (takes at least 30 days for a cell to fully repopulate)
Good to see there are others within the PZ community that enjoy playing the game their way. I can't stand the toxic chads who shit on players for not playing apocalypse default.
Omg thank you! I was only changing the pop multiplier, not the respawn one! That explains why when I cleared the prison a ton of zombies came back anyways lol Thank you babes
Thank you for sharing this, I was trying to find someone who also agreed with it being hard but low makes it so there are no zombies, at least feels like that...
Great tips. Another factor I've noticed quite annoying is the rate of how often you need to eat. Even when there are traits for eating an drinking. On one of my session I spent more time with feeding the character than actually playing the game which became dull and boring. Longer stats or no hunger and thirst mod really helps in this regard to use one at a time. Depending on how hard you want it to be nutrition wise.
For whom it may concern: Map mods are great and extra fun. But what I’ve stumbled upon last night, makes me feel normal pop is lack luster. I’m about 2 1/2 months in a play through. Looted two towns and have 8 vehicles and a trailer. Built a double wall of normal frame wall and then a log wall outside of that, even built a chop shop! I spawned at a mod location called forest ranger hideaway. Right up the road is fort red stone. There was maybe 4-500 zeds including at the front gate. A cakewalk to say the least with just a spas shotgun and blasting Creedence and Clearwater “Fortunate Son”. I suggest for you fellow hoarders, pump the count up, or at least the peak pop multiplier. Clusters were less than a dozen each. And with the amount of munitions you’ll already have by 2 months in, the loot you’ll get from red stone sets you up for years, I suggest you take at least a dozen of the countless empty crates around the base! Clear it first, possibly even build gates and find the hole in the perimeter wall and shore it up. Go home and get your mil truck and trailer for 1k kilo capacity, have fun looting and good luck!
Glad im not alone on the low and normal population count preset Thanks for the settings explanation, now i can have abit challenging without feeling BS
I prefer to remove the groups and the respawning since it makes the game more realistic, and it makes dealing with small groups more bearable rather than having 10 million zombies follow one zombie at a time
@@themudpit621 The group leaders dont have anything unique, they are simply a zombie assigned to the others to follow no matter what. If the leader spots you, then they can lead the entire horde to you for no good reason and not because the player was at fault only because of bad coding
I read that setting the respawn hours to 0 could mess with the population growth. If someone wants to disable respawn, I think it would be best to set just respawn multiplier to 0.
I wonder if this is whats messing with me. Ive been getting populations if 500 in a cell with no buildings and no buuldings in any of its surrounding cells
@@davidburnett5049 from what I understood, if you set respawn hours to 0, then the game is unable to increase the population from the initial population to the peak value. Respawn multiplier is what the game uses to "restore" the population you "cleared" to the ideal value.
You have helped me a lot. Thanks :) I'm uses a car horn to clear the area around the base, then just lead them out into the field and use a molotov cocktail. You have to manage somehow :D
I'm using Pop Multiplier: 3 Start Multiplier: 0.1 Peak Multiplier: 1.5. These settings seem decent for modded playthroughs, but if I were to do it again I would just max out my peak multiplier and add another .3 onto the start multiplier. While the hordes with my settings are massive, and with mods like Snakes (the military complex in particular) you are easily having to clear out 5,000 zombies to get anywhere or loot anything. Some won't like it, but as someone who has never messed with zombie pop before I am absolutely loving it. The area I started in is completely dead but the moment you go somewhere else you are greeted with hell. Also would STRONGLY suggest changing the helicopter event from just once to sometimes.
I don't agree to disable the respawn. How do you want the population to grow if there is no way for a zombi to spawn ? Also crowbar can only be found on zombies spawned D+10 (ref zomboid wiki). It's your job to clear your area, if threre is 0 zombie in your area, 0.1 x 0 = 0 zombie allowed to respawn.
I do wish they differentiated between respawn and first spawn, because if you set respawn off populations become static in cells once you enter them, so your starting area is going to be extremely easy in comparison to what it should be if zombies spawned normally.
They ARE seperate. Nothing spawns in the cell you are currently in regardless of respawn or regular spawn. With respawn on you just won't notice this because there will always be enough zombies around to migrate to your base at random. Personally I prefer with respawn off. If you don't like to be too static you can still turn respawn off for the realism but at the same time increase the amount of meta events, chopper events and house alarms. Those will shuffle them around. You can also fiddle with the zombie settings and increase raids etc.
@@Puschit1 No that's not what I'm talking about, what I'm referring to is if you set the peak be high and to occur and like a month after you start then in your 1st town you start in you're probably going to explore every cell pretty early on and that locks their populations because once you enter a cell no new zombies will spawn in even after you leave the cell since respawn is set to 0 and "respawn" and "1st spawn" are treatsd the same. So you run into this problem with like every starting town will be Easier than they should be because you're gonna enter every cell in the area pretty quickly and zombies don't spawn that much in the surrounding woods.
yeah i felt this way too. peoples solution was to just play stealthie. but there's a horde in every single direction and you have to pull at least one to get through to somewhere to keep moving.
this lowkey makes sense because at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse not EVERYONE is gonna be instantly zombified, it takes time for people to get bitten and infected and for the zombie population to increase over time, it never made sense to me that there was already huge hordes formed as soon as you spawn into a fresh world
I noticed in a clip that you were firing a shotgun while walking backwards. You'll be more efficient in shooting if you get some distance and then shoot while standing still. It's not always an option if there are a bunch of zombies but it could be helpful.
If you're like me however, and you feel like no zombie respawns is "meh", set the "Respawn hours" at like 300 and "Respawn Unseen Hours" to 160. That if you dont look at an area for 160 hours, 300 hours after that zombies will respawn...which is about 3 weeks total btw.
I do this same setting but make the max pop to high. I find by the time the population is max the town I’m in has hardly any in it. As well my skills and gear are good enough to deal with larger groups. I’ll also have a decent base and cars by the max pop. This being said my start town will be low pop while all the other towns are insane and take weeks of clearing to explore peacefully.
The reason I love no respawn and no or very low loot respawn is that it forces you to move, you can clear out a town but eventually you'll need to find another small town or place to go, which means you'll need to prioritize and strategize, while with infinite respawn you can survive on loot if you are good at killing zombies and camping in a base
I've tried multiple options , one I'm on now feels about right , 1.5 , 0.75 and 1.5. , have respawn to 2 weeks , set respawn to 0.05 instead of 0.1. But also I install expanded heli mod to move the zombies around. Though I may tune helios down a touch as I got shot with 2 lodged bullets and down to third hp, if i didnt have tweezers and suture it would of been curtains. Try these settings , I'm at 2 months and it's not dull 😁
My personal favorite settings are insane, no respawn. I have like 1300 hours though. Side note: im pretty sure zombies still spawn till the peak day even with zombie respawn off
I studied the map and have max pop so I take a run or drive around with horn and drag them away from either said building or survivor house or annotated map house. Works well and makes you rethink strategy if a thousand or so are blocking the road ahead
I love it when games let you customize difficulty like this.
Like the game says, “Die in just the way you like.”
its a god send
Otherwise Id compare this game to Dark Souls. My coworker said "You like Terraria, youll like this" HAHAH I had such a jump scare within the first 10 seconds. This game is amazing
where you choose to spawn is also a great way to modify difficulty
I set the zombies to none
Makes the game much easier :)
The simple fact of having no respawn makes the game instantly better, now you can do stuff instead of having to clear 50 zombies per day even though you had just cleared your area
You can just set the respawn unseen hours up to like 3-5 days or whatever, then at least the city center's etc don't get totally devoid of life over time but your safehouse is always clear cause there's almost never a time you're away for that long. Personally I like the respawn hours, if you turn respawns off you take away any and all reasons to use barricades once an initial clear is done, which doesn't seem right to me.
@@FlaxeMusic Zombies still migrate towards empty cell though, with respawn off it makes you feel like you are actully clearing out the area even while zombies still are present because they roam around
@@sylvananas7923 yeah I love turning off respawn its much more realistic that way once they add npcs im planning on playing on the same world for multiple in game years even if I end up dieing and have to make new characters and it would make sense after say about 5 or so years the zombies would be mostly wiped out by the survivors exept the odd zombie that got lost in the woods or is roaming the high way
@@craigmarsh7448 I play the game for realism not difficulty i try to make the sandbox settings as realistic as possible but I guess thats the cool thing about this game you can customize it for the exact play style you want
@@sylvananas7923 True but a problem, at least for me, is the game doesn't differentiate between respawn and spawn rates and spawning stops once you enter a cell. so if you spawn in like WestPoint and enter all the cells in that part of the map pretty early on the town will never reach a peak pop and zombie's aren't gonna migrate from the barren woods so you don't really get that buildup
as a new player, i started my first game. Not touching the sandbox because I didn't know what to expect. I spawned in a house with TV already on at max volume and literally got surrounded in less than a minute. 10/10
well, in my firts run I spawned in a house with the alarm going off... you can imagine how that went!
@@martinrey8662 fun I imagined
Whats always fun is to spawn in an empty house (no loot) with max fog and a minimum of 30 zombies scattered around you that can see through fog without issue, but you can't. And running zombies was turned on.....
That just means your character was a dumbass before you started controlling them
My first game starts with tv at max volume and two zombies all ready at my House....die without knowing what just happened great experience 😅😅😅
I set the population to insane but turn off zombie spawning. That way the game is still brutally hard but you can gradually clear out the area around your base
That sounds like an awesome idea! gonna try that out right now lol
@@MoonArtyre I play all my games with insane population. it works really well. The fun is to clear the city block by block. sometimes youll need to live the woods for a few weeks until you have somewhere safe to stay. Just dont try sprinters with insane population, that wont end well.
@@SkillIncarnate insane population + sprinters ... that's literally World War Z (movie) xD
@@mauriciofreitas3384 Im doing a series where i play high population and sprinters and that was near suicidal. Dont even try it without a crossbow or archery mod.
this does look good but i wouldnt do this personally because it makes the difficulty curve way too massive imo, ok maybe only a couple of times. like at the beginning its going to be hard but that difficulty curve is going to make it where you're a god by the end, usually games counter this by scaling the difficulty of their game, which is what project zomboid does originally
I always turn respawning off because I like having each kill hold some significance to the overall game. Every zombie at game start in the world? That's it. If I go several years into a game and in the meantime killing thousands of zombies, eventually the world is gonna be near-barren... My choices had an impact on the world.
This is another reason why I'm excited to see survivors NPCs added... I wanna see the world go from a zombie-infested hellhole to humanity reclaiming Kentucky and zombies becoming a rarity.
I can't wait until I can make a world where if you survive the winter, zombies die off/become slower and what you really have to worry about is the animals, other survivors, and the bitter cold
@@nahman3836 or zombie ice cubes
that would be like the sims ^^
i personally am unsure if i'll turn respawning off, considering the zombies being an ever-looming threat is a key portion of the game
@@Totally_Bonkers there's more than enough zombies to go around even with vanilla settings, that and the fact that travelling from town to town is a pretty big part of this game. I think it would only be a problem if the player decides to clear out massive parts of town using only 1 molotov, which is a very cheap and effective way to clear a loot area, but that's if you don't include Louisville which could easily take you 5 months of non stop clearing to eventually rid the place of zombies
For new players struggling at the beginning:
An important strat you need to know is kiting. No one expects you to clear out an entire area before looting, the easiest thing to do is to shout and gather up as many zeds as possible (assuming vanilla settings). Walk in circles around your horde as tight as you can without being grabbed. Once you’re satisfied with the amount of zeds you’ve collected, start leading them away from the POI you’re trying to loot while occasionally doing circles to tighten the horde (while walking zeds will tend to separate and lag behind one another). Now you should be trying to lead them either into the woods, around a tight corner of a building, or through a house (don’t attempt the house strat if you’re not comfortable with the mechanics). As soon as you reach any of the above mentioned places, perform a short sprint (few seconds) to break line of sight, then crouch and take a wide arc back. If you did it correctly the horde will just shamble in the last direction they saw you before eventually giving up. Congrats, now that original POI is free to loot.
Do you really call the zombies "zeds"...
@@KnightK51 Didn’t feel like typing out zombie every time, this comment was long enough already. Same reason I used “POI” instead of “Point/Place of Interest”
@@MkiSaskTheGlumpSod I wouldn't know what's POI if you didn't clarify...
@@martinmystery4610 Ah my mistake, it’s a pretty common abbreviation in the community but I forgot not everyone is as familiar.
While this works, it is also time consuming but does NOT get rid of them permanently, it just shuffles them around. So, you either lead them to an area where you might go next in the future and then you have to deal with twice the numbers ... or you lead them to areas you already cleared, which would be even more annoying. Ok, maybe you play with respawn on and don't mind because the place will be overrun anyway within a few days, but still. I'd rather take the time and kill. This gives you XP, extra loot and practice.
What would be interesting is population accuracy (2-5 zombies for each house). Louisville starting with 75% zombie pop and slowly spreading through the map. Fewer zombies in streets, and more zombies in places like houses and hospitals
This game would be perfect if it started off without infection, imagine living thriving towns but slowly different towns get infected and you hear it in the radio and tv, some people leave large towns to go and help smaller ones while at the end largest town in game is besieged, wouldn't that be an amazing spectable in online, also having possibility to contact survivors by radio in different parts of the map
And much less zombies in the countryside. Tried finding a farm location to live but there was zombies every couple of metres for no damn reason.
@@jakenake3401 Sadly the dev confirmed that he wouldn't be doing any scenario that happened before or as the apocalypse started
@@cheems4x961have heard multiple people say this and ive seen modders perform miracles before so maybe?
I tried putting the population to insane, and let me tell you. Even with item spawn of a minigun, I was not able to clear a horde located out of an urban population. These settings you shared are realistic enough for me. Will also give you rally group separation suggestion a try in my next playthrough. Thanks for this!
I always go for insane but with a pop start of 0.1 and a peak at 64 days. You can slowly see the rise of the undead, and you gotta hurry to get all that sweet sweet loot before it's too late. 876 respawn hours and 320 unseen hours with a 0.1 pop respawn per cycle, and you'll never stop fearing the undead, but they won't flood your base as soon as you finish clearing westpoint.
I was on a server with high spawns but not insane and I literally kept getting swarmed instantly on spawn. The wackiest respawn attempt was me instantly being surrounded by a horde in the middle of the woods at a camp site.
If you couldn't clear out an insane pop in an urban area whilst running Brita's weapons (i assume ur using britas since u said minigun), you just suck my guy. Any server using Brita's should have the population locked at insane
Just grind your experience. I don't mean your character I mean your literal experience with the game.
I always play on insane pop and now all my characters survive past winter before I get bored and start a new player with a new trait makeup.
If you set the respawn hours to max, the respawn unseen hours to 1 week(168 hours), and the respawn multiplier to 0.1, you should theoretically get 10% zombie population regrowth once per year in every location you *haven't* been to for more than a week. This means it would take 10 in-game years to get full population regrowth, but at least you'd have something to do every now and then besides forage and whatnot.
If you play on 1 day = 2 hours or more, you'll effectively never have to deal with a huge horde once you clear out an area, but coupled with migration, you'll still have something to do until your character grows old and dies. Either way, just play around with it, generally keeping Respawn Hours 1000-8000, Unseen Hours from 50-500, and Respawn multiplier 0.1-0.3, and it should add some flavor back into the endgame/"post" game.
Yesss, the amount of customization this game offers is AMAZING. Love trying to set up Day of the Dead, TWD, or 28 Day Zombo settings.
An added plus, the devs FULLY support modding, so if you can't quite get the options you want in vanilla, check out the robust modding scene.
I like how you can save and give custom names to the difficulty settings you choose. I got a resident evil difficulty, walking dead one, and the hardest one so far I made is train to Busan difficulty
That's nice. Can you tell how the walkind dead one it's?
@@zofuzsc2296 semi easy. All shamblers and only bites turn. Scratches & lacerations are not infectious. Zeds can still overrun and get you if youre not careful
@@LegendaryMercDC cool thx
@@zofuzsc2296 put slow walking zombies, amount of zombie x3.5, and that the zombies do not appear again, and also configure that the zombies are explorers so you would have the walking dead style
I’m curious what the Train to Busan difficulty is
This is a wonderful explanation. As a server admin, this is invaluable info that I didn't know I needed to know lol
Thanks, man. I really appreciate it!
no problem dude glad i could help
@Asterius That'd be so cool! Add to it random migrating zombie horde events that would have a chance to siege the players defenses, though it would be better if it were time based that way you'd have to survive long enough for the horde to clear away and continue on the migration path.
My favorite settings after gaining a bit of experience:
Starting Zombies: 0.5
Population: 1
Peak day: 60
Peak Population: 2
Zombie respawns set to once a week instead of the default every 16h. So you have two months to prep for a huge peak of zombies, if you make it there. The ramp up in zombie count is nice and once you cleared an area, you're good for a few in game days to loot around. Meta events will still attract zombies in "cleared" cells but it's not as bad as 16h respawns.
When you say respawns to once a week do you mean the "Respawn Unseen Hours" or the other "Respawn Hours" option?
Also, would you recon these settings would work well in a private server with up to like 5 people?
Unseen hours - I have it set to 168h
These settings are great for small servers especially if you have new comers in your group, lets them get the hang of things before you get swarmed by zombies.
You can also leave the peak population to default at 1.5 if you dont want the extra zombies come peak day.
I prefer to leave some zombie respawns instead of turning them off because zombies are a great source of cloths, threads, lighters, matches and depending on your loot settings (rare or normal) they can be a great source of duffel bags and survival gear. (Knives, bags, leather gloves etc)
These are the settings I use. It adds to the immersion. Great Video!! Hope there's more to come.
thank you comments like these really make my day
I think game is realistic in terms of gameplay approach so preventing the respawn is more realistic and fitting in my opinion.
Respawning could also sound realistic if you consider the respawned zombies as survivors that got infected recently.
@@Hero4fun77 that means police stations just shit out an infinite amount of police officers ready to be bitten and turned into zombies.
@@Hero4fun77that's how I think of it
Or people from outside the exclusion zone who got infected and ended up shambling into the map
My potato PC: “Best I can do is 1”
Me: 1 what?
PPC: “Yes”
I love hearing other players setups and reasoning behind them!
I’ve been looking for a video like this! I’ve been playing since 2016, and have been looking to make my play throughs a little more realistic. Thanks buddy 🤘
Personally I do like to keep respawning on, but probably set the time it takes for them to respawn after leaving to a higher number, and/or how many can respawn to a lower number. This means a town won't be overrun again a few days after you've cleared it, but if you don't keep on top of things they'll slowly come back.
In the zombie apocalypse, no place is safe forever, so I find that this is more immersive. You have to pick which areas to keep clear. It's housekeeping, basically. Just as you need to weed and water the crops and clear the driveway of saplings, you occasionally need to re-secure your surroundings. The lower respawn settings make it feel less like it's a wasted effort, so you _can_ realistically keep a decently large area safe. Just don't get _too_ comfortable, because even if things look clear, there could always be a few zombies around if you haven't been there in a few days.
I agree. It's a zombie apocalypse and the lore seems to indicate that the whole world must be struggling with it. The longer respawn can simulate zombies migrating from nearby cities as other survivors keep dying and becoming zombies.
There is no way a single person can clear an entire town and keep it safe forever in a world wide apocalypse. It just doesn't sound realistic to me.
For years I've eyed this game cause of its depth and simple perspective/graphics. I pirated it on two different occasions about a year apart to try it. First time I was being lazy and thought there is way to much to learn and the UI is a bit odd, gave up at the end of the tutorial. 2nd time I made it past that but did not enjoy the difficulty and learning curve. Finally I bought the game as I was still very interested in the game as it just seems so fun from gameplay I have seen and it was out of Early Access. Still struggled BUT I messed around with stuff more, I watched loads of videos to learn the ins and outs and beginner builds and tips, learning what everything is and what it does conditions and stats wise as well as traits. Watching vids like this to tinker with the games settings. And now I enjoy the game and slowly will up the difficulty as I improve. Its a very rewarding game. I appreciate your video.
More or less my journey, too, without the pirating. It's a game that looks overwhelming and intimidating. It's the only game that gives me a kind of anxiety where you are afraid of even starting a game. At the same time this is very intriguing. Watching videos of guys like AmbigousAmphibian convinced me of the quality of the game so I stuck around with gaps of weeks not touching it. Now it's my first tun where I survive for longer than a week and it's fantastic. I have to admit, though, that I backup my savefiles before starting a session. I am okay with losing a day/session's worth of progress if I screw up but not with losing everything, especially when you die due to things like misclicks or stuff you possibly could not have known.
Riverside is my go to starting place with normal settings. Good coverage to sneak around and loot up. I’d say it’s a great starting area for new players if you don’t want to change the settings.
>High pop
>1.0 start multiplier
>1.9 peak
>Zombie respawns off
Tons of zombies to kill, that don't come back. What could be better?
Very well explained, thank you
Thanks for the Video ! was looking for these options earlier. :D
no problem glad i could help :)
I love the amount of customizability you have when it comes to scenarios. I like doing weak as hell shamblers with every stat at minimum, but letting peak population be huge to compensate. I think its still always balanced as you can still find the clown car bathroom in any playthrough.
When I first looked at the settings and changed them, it felt like turning the amount down to "less" didn't do much at all. Like it genuinely felt like well, now there are 9 zombies at each crossroad instead of 10. Might've just been my luck though haha. So I found these advanced settings really quick :D
I love this, thank you! I have so much fun with this game but it can be so frustrating with how many zombies there are, you’re a lifesaver. ❤️
no problem I remember being the same way when I first started and i could barely survive longer than a day so when i figured out these settings i knew i had to share them
It’s always nice to start in a relatively remote part of town only to find three times the population the area should have in Zombies.
What is it with the default zombie pop, was there some sort of mega tourist attraction right before the apocalypse?
My hand-wavy headcanon explanation has always been that they are people from surrounding communities trying (and failing) to evacuate to Louisville, where they thought they'd get help/answers. Sadly they all died on the way though and for some reason surrounded my house, lol
I know you're only joking but someone counted the population of zombies in the game using the debug feature and they actually found that the population is literally 3* higher than what it should be. I've had the population set 0.3375 and I've been having a blast with the game ever since.
I just started playing the game and I must say that I like the default amount of zombies at the start. Makes surviving much more satisfying and finding good loot too. Though I most admit that I find there's too many blob like you mentionned here. So I'm definitely going to change that setting and I also completely forgot to put spawning at 0 for a more realistic approach
There is also an option you can turn on that enables certain weapons to hit multiple zombies, that would help with blobs a bit. But use this carefully and preferably with weapons that also have a good knockback
Set population multiplier to 1
Set population start multiplier to 0.6
Set population peak multiplier to 1.7
Peak day : 48
Water shut down 0 to 6 months (water irl would last for years)
Electricity shut off : 0 to 2 months
And of course turn off all zombies respawn off.
Thanks for the thorough explanation. I was reading threads and nobody described it this well. 👏 I still like the idea of a minimal respawn so I set my respawn hours to 8760, pop peak day 365
Just disable it...
@@Tetragramix I still want a few to spawn though.
I personally like having respawn off. In that way killing any Zombie feels like a little reward in its own way, knowing you have one less of these mfs on the map roaming around to kill you (theoretically you could make killing all zombies your quest) I just like to have that as a sense of progress and reward for putting myself in a risky situation and surviving. Also trying to live in a base will become much much more pleasant and will make you able to focus on other stuff now and then
We are so noob in the game that we set the zombies to only slow shamblers and I think we even adjusted either their memory or hearing and sight. Also, to us part of the fun is to experience more of the traditional Dawn of the Dead/The Walking Dead style zombies so we kept the population as default to compensate the slower moving hordes. And we still struggle from time to time!
I do love that the game has all these options exposed to the users. It's very cool and can create greatly different scenarios.
just a head's up, turning respawn off also locks the entire map to your starting respawn multiplier. the peak day multiplier uses the respawn mechanic to repopulate so essentially it has no effect with respawn off
I know you are right about the immediate area you are in, but areas you haven't visited yet don't spawn items in till you visit so it might work the same for zombies? idk im very curious myself
The zombies respawn is a hidden rule that broke the immersion as soon as you found out about it
Yeah same. I start muldraugh and I started clearing out the town. Eventually however, my cleared out zones started to fill back up as if I've never went there. 600 Zombie kills in one month down the drain, that's what it feels like. I think a very slow zombie respawn may be fine though? To keep you on edge kinda. A zombie here, a zombie there maybe.
But no the game by default just constantly refuels emptied zones.
i rarely like videos but yours deserves a like and subscribe. everyone that starts this game should take a look at this video!
Awesome video very informative I’m surprised you don’t have more subs
My personal settings that suit me are:
Pop Mult: 0.1
Pop Start: 0.5
Pop Peak: 2.25
Peak Day: 150
I know, really low numbers. But I still experience alarms causing 50-100 zombies. The mall is still absolutely infested. I'm at like 30 days in and 600+ zombie kills, only when I have to. I think it gives the most satisfying experience, personally. I've almost died several times with hordes of 50+ that accumulate out of nowhere
Having just bought the game, your channel has been really helpful to make the game approachable. It basically picks up where the tutorial leaves off. You consistently give good, straight to the point tips and perspective. Thank you.
Having played a few rounds and gotten overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies, this is exactly what I was looking for.
You'd have to put redistribution to 0 if you don't want the entire map to spread out its population every time you clear somewhere. It will feel a lot like they are re-spawning because they keep coming until you wipe out the entire map.
That's not true
@@PhialTrout So how does redistribution work then?
@@KS-xd6ql groups of zombies will move around their cell, but will not leave a cell unless something drags them out like a player walking and yelling and giving them time to catch up. If you kill every zombie in a cell, no more will migrate to it unless pulled in by the player or a meta event such as the heli. If you killed every zombie in the south of the map, you would never see another unless you purposefully dragged them down there.
@@PhialTrout Oh so the redistribution is localized to cells. Good to know. Thanks
I really wish there was realistic population mod. and by that i mean someone counts every individual house, workplace etc and makes zombies spawns from that info. Have zombies in different outfits at their respective jobs, stuff like that. I also think a proper horde mod would be cool, maybe if too many zombies group up together they start to migrate down highways and stuff (similar to state of decay or something). These are things i wish for, but i dont even know if its possible to mod the AI in zomboid lol
Same, and I’m sure it would be possible
I’ve been playing on apocalypse mode this whole time, and this just solved all my difficulty issues with the game.
glad I could help
I appreciate this video, I’m just starting off and some other videos I have come across didn’t bring up some points that you have. Which is interesting but none to less I’m trying to learn the game as it’s very immersive and in depth. So thank you
i loved this video man. i was in trouble lately because of the reason you mentioned. thanks! Edit: typo
Another good in-between is low population, but they're super strong sprinters with great eyesight and hearing.
You can also deactivate the grouping of zombies by setting „rally group size“ to zero, it makes it so that all zombies act naturally and they’re spread out randomly, but will still „group“ together without being in an unrealistic spawn cluster. They will still get attracted and accumulated into groups by sounds but the look and realism is better
but if you have respawn turned off, does the population ever even grow to reach the peak?
Good question
@@grayglimpse i think it still does, but only in unloaded cells. I have 300 hours and play almost exclusively with respawn off, but pretty huge peak pops compared to my initial, so I’d hope i can tell.
I love this it also makes the game way more realistic
if you start at day 0 in a zombie apocalypse you would expect the number of the zombie population to increase as more time goes by
not if you're the only human left and the region is sealed off, where are they coming from? Zombie breeding?
@@themudpit621 but u are not the only human left, even u cant see a single npc where does the shots come from? i like to think the zom pop goes up as survivors get infected but 0.5 at start seems too low tbh
Turning respawn off is meta IMO... it makes the game more realistic. What they DO need to add however is random "roaming hordes" that can come from off the map edges and just wander through the map on a set (random) direction. This would keep the realism factor, without running out of zombies. I know the map is surrounded by a "perimeter" fence, but perhaps it could "fail" at random places after a few months to let these roaming hordes in.
Isn’t the fence meant to keep the zombies in?
@@mrcheese5383 Sure, perhaps... but what's to say they didn't get out already and the "containment" isn't really a containment.
I like respawn off because zombie migration means no area is ever entirely clear - just mostly and until they migrate to fill the gap. It also means I can theoretically clear all of knox county. I may never do it, but knowing it is a possibility makes the game feel better.
I've been looking for a way my friends and I play in a server where zombies don't respawn (it's more realistic for us that way), and this video helped a lot! Now we understand what are those numbers refering to. Thanks you!
Even on my low population run, I still find groups of hundreds of undead, namely in Knox County. I play on Eerie County with the connected Knox County mod. In my experience i’ve mostly cleared Section C of Eerie County, but as I am on about month 7, I see hordes of zombies coming into the rural area from the major cities like Louisville. And as they are set to respawn, these hordes come in seasonal waves to my section of the map as the game tries to fill the empty zones in my area.
Yeah on low I went to a prison band killed probably 400 zombies before I ran out of ammo, still more inside, crazy
I appreciated the explanation of multipliers and rally size. You've really earned this Like!
I've got a game going right now with population set to 1.0 and peak set to 1.5 (normal) with no respawn. My goal for this playthrough is to kill every zombie on the whole map (besides the ones hiding in the forests). I started in Rosewood I've got 2 months in game time so far, zombies have peaked and I've killed 4,000+ zeds and I'm pretty sure that doesn't even include the hundreds I've burned. Aaaand I'm still in Rosewood lmao.
hey, super late but how did this playthrough go?
You end up dying?
My preference is to set "unseen respawn" to 72h=3d, respawn to 144h=6d .. 240h=10d, and slow redistribbute, something like respawn time. Making it both worth clearing areas yet not feel bored of just looting at the same area for days without a single zombie in sight.
Makes patrols a thing to do too.
The population multipliers work a bit differently than you said. In fact, the name of the first setting in the advanced options is a bit misleading since it's a different option entirely from the two that follow. There are actually _two_ multipliers at work here. One of them is static (the one in the first option) and the second is dynamic (the one in the second and third options). These multiply together, so you can go up to a total of 16x population.
So if you leave the start and peak at 1.0 and 1.5 respectively, for "normal", the population goes from 1 to 1.5, and for "low" it goes from 0.35 to 0.525. So even at its peak, "low" has about half the zombies you see at the start on "normal".
Why do all multipliers work so weirdly in this game? Like the skill multipliers work weirdly as well where a 150% is like a 3x bonus or something... (I can't even remember xD
@@zwenkwiel816 Another fun one. When reading skill books you can (or could, maybe it's different in build 41?) get multipliers of below 1. iirc they just don't have an effect until they reach 1. Either that or they're the _bonus_ you get. But the way it's displayed makes you think you get half XP for a skill with a 0.5 XP multiplier, which is definitely not the case because then you wouldn't get any XP at all for skills you didn't read books for.
Exactly. I've tried 0.5 for the Initial Population and raised the peak multiplier to 1.8. When it got to the peak day I felt like the world still had very few zombies... Maybe the 0.5 multiplier downgraded the peak? 0.5 x 1.8 = 0.9 (even lower than the vanilla 1.5x peak).
I guess if you'd want a low population in the beggining that gets increasingly high till the peak day you'd have to raise the peak number as well. I'll be trying 0.6x for the initial population and 2.8x for the peak day and see what happens. 0,6 x 2,8 = 1,68 (Maybe it's enough to spawn a decent amount of zombies at the peak day?)
I used to be someone who would have turned around and told you to "get gud" but as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that it's less important to be good at the game then it is to have fun with the game. This applies to any game really. Example, in RimWorld I play on Community Builder most of the time. I really don't like it when the game sends me raid after raid after raid, but I still want raids from time to time otherwise I'm basically missing out on half of the game. The game becomes so much better, so much more fun for me, and I've put hundreds and hundreds of more hours into it then I otherwise would have.
Same should be true for any game, even Project Zomboid. Adjust the difficulty so it's fun for you. If you're someone who wants the hard core experience and the hopelessness of millions of zombies shambling into your base? Crank that difficulty up! If you're more like me and like to take things slower and struggle to handle large hordes of zombies? Yeah, no shame in turning that difficulty down!
Anyway, play the games you want to play at the difficulty you want to play them! Life is too fricken short to worry about something unimportant like that.
Try High (2.0) population with 1.0 start multiplier, but set Rally Group Size to 0, and the game becomes much more managable even on the default population settings (i always play on High pop. settings) because they not spawn in already formed groups, but they can still form hordes if you attract to much zombies on yourself. Count that if you turn respawn off completely, the places can become empty and pretty boring after you clear them out completely, instead i like to set respawn timers high, plus i play with 2 hours long days, that is in itself doubling the respawn times.
I love how customizable the game is. Sometimes I do wish it would add the option to save, for those of us who want to play without fear of losing the world upon death. Ofc u can use backup saves but it takes so long to save like that lol. I usually play with settings similar to this
you can continue on the same world save with a new character, and even run into your zombified former self
The world doesn't end when you die, though.... what are you on about?
Go to you c drive => Users => [your name] => Zomboid => Saves , then look for your game and copy/paste the entire folder of your game. Voila, you now have a backup file in case something stupid happens.
nah, no need for a save option. this is how u died
The population peak day count is a sneaky reference from the devs to 28 days later. Objectively the best zombie movie ever made
never seen it but i’ll definitely have to check it out
Oh hey that double story house with the pink flowers in the driveway is my favorite base. Those fences slap 👁👄👁💖
These settings are good for new players to get the hang of the game but after you understand the mechanics of efficient zombie killing even the vanilla settings(minus the zombie re-spawn) seem to become too easy. My friend group and I are about to add sprinters into the server just spice things up a bit.
I tried sprinters once and I deleted that world a few minutes after spawning in due to my fear of hordes of zombies running at me at full speed
@@spoodle Try custom zombies mod, 10% sprinters, 10% crawlers, 10% play dead. Sometimes you don't see one for days, sometimes a whole group of them gank you.
It's really spicy.
@@butterphli3z might actually add this mod instead of just turning on sprinters. Thanks for the suggestion.
really well explained and helpful for players of all levels of experience. Nicely done! PS You were actually wearing pants in this video! Is that a first and only time??
I like the no repsawn ordeal. Im still pretty new to the game myself and ive died a SHIT-TON. I didn't know u could do this until like a week ago on a random video. Im glad u explained it tho cause i wasn't sure how all that worked myself.
Just a quick heads up that turning off zombie respawn breaks the "Peak Population" mechanic and prevents zombies from spawning in to reach that 1.5 peak pop. You're going to have 0.5 population forever.
only in cells you have visited. if you enter a cell you haven't been to before after peak population hours the zombie population in that cell will be 1.5
The only thing I change is the respawn rate from 72.0 to 720 which just means zombies wont respawn for 30 days after you clear an area. Default settings in west point for example, I ended up killing 200+ zombies in the first 7 in-game days and the respawns made the area I was clearing even more populated by the end that it feels like it's impossible to keep up. 30 days feels much better imo and feels like every zombie you kill is helping you progress
If you really wanna feel progress , turn respawn off, that way, every kill truly matters, and to make yourself a focus you can try and kill every zombie on the map
"if you think the zombie population is too high" *me and my friends setting the zombie population to insane*
Thanks for the explanation of these settings. Now I can finally experiment with these settings.
Do you notice an increase in the zombie population with this? From what I understand, if you don't have respawn on, then the population won't increase to meet the level depending on the age of the world
You should do challenge series where we can follow your adventures over multiple episodes until your character dies, I'd appreciate that !
Yep, I never have respawns on, it is a bad setting for immersion, enjoyment and general gameplay.
It really depends, like a multi-player server isn't much fun without respawns. Also turned it on in some single player games though. Like if you've survived for months and cleared the whole town around you it can get kind of boring without any zombies so having respawn turned on is fun.
By default they only respawn like 10% ever 3 days but only if you haven't visited that cell for some time (default is like 16 hours iirc). So it just means some zombies will respawn but only if you haven't been to an area for some time (takes at least 30 days for a cell to fully repopulate)
Good to see there are others within the PZ community that enjoy playing the game their way. I can't stand the toxic chads who shit on players for not playing apocalypse default.
if they are toxic they are not a chad
Omg thank you! I was only changing the pop multiplier, not the respawn one! That explains why when I cleared the prison a ton of zombies came back anyways lol Thank you babes
Thank you for sharing this, I was trying to find someone who also agreed with it being hard but low makes it so there are no zombies, at least feels like that...
Thanks for explaining the multipliers.
Great tips. Another factor I've noticed quite annoying is the rate of how often you need to eat. Even when there are traits for eating an drinking. On one of my session I spent more time with feeding the character than actually playing the game which became dull and boring.
Longer stats or no hunger and thirst mod really helps in this regard to use one at a time. Depending on how hard you want it to be nutrition wise.
That rally group separations gonna save my life
For whom it may concern:
Map mods are great and extra fun. But what I’ve stumbled upon last night, makes me feel normal pop is lack luster. I’m about 2 1/2 months in a play through. Looted two towns and have 8 vehicles and a trailer. Built a double wall of normal frame wall and then a log wall outside of that, even built a chop shop! I spawned at a mod location called forest ranger hideaway. Right up the road is fort red stone. There was maybe 4-500 zeds including at the front gate. A cakewalk to say the least with just a spas shotgun and blasting Creedence and Clearwater “Fortunate Son”. I suggest for you fellow hoarders, pump the count up, or at least the peak pop multiplier. Clusters were less than a dozen each. And with the amount of munitions you’ll already have by 2 months in, the loot you’ll get from red stone sets you up for years, I suggest you take at least a dozen of the countless empty crates around the base! Clear it first, possibly even build gates and find the hole in the perimeter wall and shore it up. Go home and get your mil truck and trailer for 1k kilo capacity, have fun looting and good luck!
Glad im not alone on the low and normal population count preset
Thanks for the settings explanation, now i can have abit challenging without feeling BS
I prefer to remove the groups and the respawning since it makes the game more realistic, and it makes dealing with small groups more bearable rather than having 10 million zombies follow one zombie at a time
but if you lose the groups don't you lose the group leaders? The one with the cool bags and weapons?
@@themudpit621 The group leaders dont have anything unique, they are simply a zombie assigned to the others to follow no matter what.
If the leader spots you, then they can lead the entire horde to you for no good reason and not because the player was at fault only because of bad coding
i know this is a year old but thanks for the video it really help me and my friends who just got the game
I read that setting the respawn hours to 0 could mess with the population growth. If someone wants to disable respawn, I think it would be best to set just respawn multiplier to 0.
I wonder if this is whats messing with me. Ive been getting populations if 500 in a cell with no buildings and no buuldings in any of its surrounding cells
@@davidburnett5049 from what I understood, if you set respawn hours to 0, then the game is unable to increase the population from the initial population to the peak value. Respawn multiplier is what the game uses to "restore" the population you "cleared" to the ideal value.
You have helped me a lot. Thanks :) I'm uses a car horn to clear the area around the base, then just lead them out into the field and use a molotov cocktail. You have to manage somehow :D
I'm using Pop Multiplier: 3 Start Multiplier: 0.1 Peak Multiplier: 1.5. These settings seem decent for modded playthroughs, but if I were to do it again I would just max out my peak multiplier and add another .3 onto the start multiplier.
While the hordes with my settings are massive, and with mods like Snakes (the military complex in particular) you are easily having to clear out 5,000 zombies to get anywhere or loot anything. Some won't like it, but as someone who has never messed with zombie pop before I am absolutely loving it. The area I started in is completely dead but the moment you go somewhere else you are greeted with hell.
Also would STRONGLY suggest changing the helicopter event from just once to sometimes.
I don't agree to disable the respawn. How do you want the population to grow if there is no way for a zombi to spawn ? Also crowbar can only be found on zombies spawned D+10 (ref zomboid wiki). It's your job to clear your area, if threre is 0 zombie in your area, 0.1 x 0 = 0 zombie allowed to respawn.
Crowbars are quite common weapons throughout the world.
I do wish they differentiated between respawn and first spawn, because if you set respawn off populations become static in cells once you enter them, so your starting area is going to be extremely easy in comparison to what it should be if zombies spawned normally.
They ARE seperate. Nothing spawns in the cell you are currently in regardless of respawn or regular spawn. With respawn on you just won't notice this because there will always be enough zombies around to migrate to your base at random.
Personally I prefer with respawn off. If you don't like to be too static you can still turn respawn off for the realism but at the same time increase the amount of meta events, chopper events and house alarms. Those will shuffle them around. You can also fiddle with the zombie settings and increase raids etc.
@@Puschit1 No that's not what I'm talking about, what I'm referring to is if you set the peak be high and to occur and like a month after you start then in your 1st town you start in you're probably going to explore every cell pretty early on and that locks their populations because once you enter a cell no new zombies will spawn in even after you leave the cell since respawn is set to 0 and "respawn" and "1st spawn" are treatsd the same. So you run into this problem with like every starting town will be Easier than they should be because you're gonna enter every cell in the area pretty quickly and zombies don't spawn that much in the surrounding woods.
yeah i felt this way too. peoples solution was to just play stealthie. but there's a horde in every single direction and you have to pull at least one to get through to somewhere to keep moving.
this lowkey makes sense because at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse not EVERYONE is gonna be instantly zombified, it takes time for people to get bitten and infected and for the zombie population to increase over time, it never made sense to me that there was already huge hordes formed as soon as you spawn into a fresh world
I noticed in a clip that you were firing a shotgun while walking backwards. You'll be more efficient in shooting if you get some distance and then shoot while standing still. It's not always an option if there are a bunch of zombies but it could be helpful.
Learning how to use fire will take you from nervously counting how many zombies you think you can handle to not even caring how many there are.
If you're like me however, and you feel like no zombie respawns is "meh", set the "Respawn hours" at like 300 and "Respawn Unseen Hours" to 160. That if you dont look at an area for 160 hours, 300 hours after that zombies will respawn...which is about 3 weeks total btw.
New to the game. Best run is 18 days. Thanks for these ideas. Subbed!
I do this same setting but make the max pop to high. I find by the time the population is max the town I’m in has hardly any in it. As well my skills and gear are good enough to deal with larger groups. I’ll also have a decent base and cars by the max pop. This being said my start town will be low pop while all the other towns are insane and take weeks of clearing to explore peacefully.
The reason I love no respawn and no or very low loot respawn is that it forces you to move, you can clear out a town but eventually you'll need to find another small town or place to go, which means you'll need to prioritize and strategize, while with infinite respawn you can survive on loot if you are good at killing zombies and camping in a base
been looking for a good population setting then i saw this vid. thanks
I've tried multiple options , one I'm on now feels about right , 1.5 , 0.75 and 1.5. , have respawn to 2 weeks , set respawn to 0.05 instead of 0.1. But also I install expanded heli mod to move the zombies around. Though I may tune helios down a touch as I got shot with 2 lodged bullets and down to third hp, if i didnt have tweezers and suture it would of been curtains. Try these settings , I'm at 2 months and it's not dull 😁
The sandbox settings is what won me over and the modding
My personal favorite settings are insane, no respawn. I have like 1300 hours though. Side note: im pretty sure zombies still spawn till the peak day even with zombie respawn off
I studied the map and have max pop so I take a run or drive around with horn and drag them away from either said building or survivor house or annotated map house. Works well and makes you rethink strategy if a thousand or so are blocking the road ahead
Thank you ! I can finally enjoy the game and eventually get better so one day I can play it in default settings 🎉