ladyterukiI just read someone who's also a newcomer to the game explain that they didn't understand how the helicopter event works.
"I tried to get outside and make signals or something, but the helicopter never rescued me".
...My face :
For the brave people who tolerate my PZ thread despite not playing it, the helicopter meta event is a randomly timed event during which a... helicopter will fly over your area at least once (it can come back several times during the same day), trying to spot survivors. You hear the helicopter, but you never see the helicopter.
However Zeds, which are particularly sound-motivated, hear it too and will come to your location... in numbers.
However Zeds, which are particularly sound-motivated, hear it too and will come to your location... in numbers.
The best way to handle the helicopter event is to stay hidden (masking the windows with sheets or curtains, staying in a windowless room or basement, etc.) and avoid being outside when you hear the helicopter.
The second best way to handle the helicopter event is to get in a car, and drive away so that the helicopter and hence the horde follow you away from your base location.
The third best way to handle it is to die and start over XD
The second best way to handle the helicopter event is to get in a car, and drive away so that the helicopter and hence the horde follow you away from your base location.
The third best way to handle it is to die and start over XD
So friendorino trying to get noticed by the helicopter at all cost is one of those tragic "you'll make that mistake once, then you'll learn" thing new players go through in survival games XD
Poor thing. My first helicopter event, I was looting a house and heard a sound. I wasn't sure what it was so I locked myself in a closet and waited it out XD
Poor thing. My first helicopter event, I was looting a house and heard a sound. I wasn't sure what it was so I locked myself in a closet and waited it out XD
Also : to believe you can be saved during a zombie apocalypse is...
...
...let's go with ADORABLE.
The game says "this is how you died", not "this is how you got a fright for a few days and then were rescued and were vaccinated with a cure and lived peacefully for the rest of your life".
Me : "Things are going pretty well this time around"
Also me : *crashes the truck unto the one lamppost on the highway*
Also me : *eats burnt food and starts feeling sick*
Also me : *takes a nap in the truck and dies from indigestion in my sleep*
Also me : *crashes the truck unto the one lamppost on the highway*
Also me : *eats burnt food and starts feeling sick*
Also me : *takes a nap in the truck and dies from indigestion in my sleep*
For this run I tried to live in the gas station/Spiffo's/clothing store area between Muldraugh and West Point. For a loot goblin such as myself, having my storage in the clothing store was great ! I got a stove and a TV from the nearby trailer park, and I also looted a cot in West Point fairly quickly, so I had a liveable home pretty fast.
However the area is really ugly, there is of course no natural body of water, and it's so far of f*cking everything, especially if you have car carcasses -
However the area is really ugly, there is of course no natural body of water, and it's so far of f*cking everything, especially if you have car carcasses -
- on the highway in both directions... So my poor Spiffo's delivery van quickly got in bad shape, and of course it was only downhill from there.
I also had the hardest time finding a generator. I went to West Point looking in garages in the fancy area of town, and none of them had one. And the clock was ticking because I had a lot of food in the fridges I looted from Spiffo's and the pizza place South of West Point.
When the electricity was cut off, I STILL didn't have a generator.
I also had the hardest time finding a generator. I went to West Point looking in garages in the fancy area of town, and none of them had one. And the clock was ticking because I had a lot of food in the fridges I looted from Spiffo's and the pizza place South of West Point.
When the electricity was cut off, I STILL didn't have a generator.
As for water, well, it was cut off on day 3 or 4, or something, so I got the habit pretty early to refill my stuff wherever I went. Honestly water isn't too big of a deal if it's just for drinking ; for watering crops it could be another matter in this spot.
Overall I liked having so much room for activities, and of course access to a gas station, but not a great location otherwise.
Overall I liked having so much room for activities, and of course access to a gas station, but not a great location otherwise.
I don't see myself trying to set up camp there again, unless I miraculously discover a mod that allows me to dig a pond.
I love how mods work in Project Zomboid. You can easily save your current modlist, which makes it easier to revert back to a previous one when a new mod messes up with your game's stability. You can easily have several saves with several modlists on a rotation. The mods don't have to load before the game launches, so you can adjust the modlist without having to reloading the game. There's a simple mod manager that allows to sort your mods automatically, or see dependencies.
Of course sometimes manual sorting seems to be preferable in edge cases (according to comments I've seen on the Steam Workshop ; but it hasn't been my experience so far), but for the most part it's taken care of. The game also inherently allows "sandbox" settings (I currently play Builder so I don't think I can play with those as much as others, but still), which incentivizes mod devs to create mods you can customize to your liking...
All in all, I don't know how long it took to get to this point. PZ has been in Early Access for longer than some Kpop idols have been alive afterall :P
But this is, currently, a pretty good system.
But this is, currently, a pretty good system.
For someone used to Rimworld mods (who honestly are a pain to change because then you have to reload your entire game... no no, not the save, I said THE ENTIRE GAME), to ARK: Survival Evolved mods (which requires mods to be properly sorted BUT will not help you do that, so every time you want to ad a mod that needs, say, to be loaded first, you have to delete the entire modlist and then readd them in the new order... God I hope ASA does that even marginally better), to TS4 mods (in which you -
- are absolutely on your own to manage the files in your game folders like a f*cking peasant from the 20th century), and so on, this is quite refreshing. Perfect, not, but so much better than a lot of what I've dealt with in the past.
Today I had a weird crash that started occuring whenever my character (Louisa, if you're curious) was going to sleep. I looked around and this seems to happen fairly regularly to a lot of people, including people playing vanilla.
I was almost about to give up when I decided to try a new run with my modlist from two days ago before I added 3 new mods (don't judge, we all knew this was going to increase exponentially, and this mod allowed to put eggs in jars !), so I started over with Louisa and -
I was almost about to give up when I decided to try a new run with my modlist from two days ago before I added 3 new mods (don't judge, we all knew this was going to increase exponentially, and this mod allowed to put eggs in jars !), so I started over with Louisa and -
- MIRACLE OF MIRACLES, no more issues when sleeping ! Thanks to the way modlists are saved that was really easy to do, too !
So other than having to restart a new run (which was going to happen anyway, because it's not like my characters live very old !), this was totally painless experience.
So other than having to restart a new run (which was going to happen anyway, because it's not like my characters live very old !), this was totally painless experience.
What do I intend to do with the rest of my Friday evening ?
Oh nothing much. Watching videos about France mostly.
Project France, A Complete Overhaul For Project Zomboid! Project France Mod Showcase!
Uh oh. My game froze/crashed again. And again, when my character went to sleep. I went over two weeks without any issue, so I genuinely thought I was good now. But I'm not, clearly.
I'm looking it up and it seems to happen to a lot of people in B42, but everyone has a different explanation for why that happens, and a different fix... It even happens to people who play vanilla. That's not good.
Mkay, so far it doesn't seem to happen if I sleep in my car.
Standing ovation.
The Survival Game That Always Kills You
Oh I see what this is. Youtube thinks I'm into zombies now, so all the zombie-related games are going to be recommended to me now. All of them.
LONG GONE [ Updated Wishlist Teaser ] PC
Oh you silly Youtube, I'm not into zombies, I'm into survival !
...games, I'm into survival games. That's what I mean.
...games, I'm into survival games. That's what I mean.
Also let's been honest, my favorite game mechanics in PZ are about scavenging in urban environments, which is not at all about poverty I swear.
Goddammit, I always die around the first month these days.
IN MY DEFENSE, try seeing or hearing anything in this damn storm.
IN MY DEFENSE, try seeing or hearing anything in this damn storm.
Ok, so this current run with Louisa actually went pretty nicely, to my surprise.
I had decided to test spawning in Muldraugh, which I don't really like as a town but has several gas stations, and I will not rest until I have tried and compared all the gas stations in vanilla XD When Louisa spawned, we made a bee-line for the South Muldraugh gas station, and set up camp there. It's not very nice by any stretch of the imagination, and the setup there is quite minimal (it doesn't even have -
I had decided to test spawning in Muldraugh, which I don't really like as a town but has several gas stations, and I will not rest until I have tried and compared all the gas stations in vanilla XD When Louisa spawned, we made a bee-line for the South Muldraugh gas station, and set up camp there. It's not very nice by any stretch of the imagination, and the setup there is quite minimal (it doesn't even have -
- any fridges in the convenience store !), so I was certain that Louisa wouldn't last long there.
Well I was wrong. Sure, the damn gas station is a fixer upper. But around it ? Pretty plentiful. There's a mini-farm nearby, so I had fresh eggs regularly. There's a lot of stores and restaurants along the highway that shoots out of the gas station, including a diner with tons of fridges and freezers. There's a handful of tool sheds, workshops and storage facilities to loot for tools and materials.
Well I was wrong. Sure, the damn gas station is a fixer upper. But around it ? Pretty plentiful. There's a mini-farm nearby, so I had fresh eggs regularly. There's a lot of stores and restaurants along the highway that shoots out of the gas station, including a diner with tons of fridges and freezers. There's a handful of tool sheds, workshops and storage facilities to loot for tools and materials.
I was surprised to last more than two weeks, but actually the area is really making it quite easy... particularly as there's a couple of trailer parks nearby with SEVERAL generators. I don't have any screenshot to prove it, but before I left base for what would be my final car trip, I had FIVE generators around base. It still doesn't solve all of my problems, but having one generator per "island" of gas pumps, plus at least two to have on rotation for the main building, makes things quite nice.
Louisa was also lucky that the water shut off happened after the two week mark, which means that I had time to store quite a few water containers (and I even added a bathtub in one of the gas station's toilets ! I have a mod that lets me take baths in them XD ). The electricity shut off on August 1st, too, and that's my favorite scenario because that way I really have time to get organized.
Two days before what would be the electricity shutoff, although of course I didn't know that but could -
Two days before what would be the electricity shutoff, although of course I didn't know that but could -
- at the very least feel it coming, I had looted most of the buildings around the gas station, so I decided to make a trip all the way to Rosewood (first time doing that long drive, actually) to try and salvage some of the stuff at the giant grocery store, and maybe even the library if I still had room on the truck/trailer I had (I did struggle with finding lvl 1 books during this run, though). Just in case I left a generator running, meaning I had about 2 days to make the trip.
As soon as I pulled up in front of the Muldraugh gas station, the electricity went poof, and all I had to do was switch to another generator with a full tank to unpack the Rosewood loot in the middle of the night.
I felt pretty good about my planning there XD
I felt pretty good about my planning there XD
And so, once the helicopter was gone, the water shut off, and now the electricity shut off, I faced the usual "now what ?" dread. I really don't like when the last of the major meta events happens and I'm like "well, I can do ANYTHING I WANT, so... what do I want ?". It's still a bit hard to make plans for that part ; the constraints of the first few weeks make it easier imho.
After a couple of days of sorting stuff and recuperating from weird wounds (Louisa kept hurting her feet when getting out of her van... which is especially annoying because she had to sleep in the van to avoid the sleep freeze I mentioned earlier this week), I decided that I needed books, especially Carpentry, and was still in the market for a sledgehammer. I knew from previous runs that Fallas Lake has TONS of tools there, so I drove West... two hours in, that damn foggy storm starts.
I really hate that weather event. You can't see anything. You can't hear anything. My hypervigilant a** is NOT comfortable with it !
My pristine truck that I had so carefully avoided to crash into lampposts barely survived the trip, but I made it to the Fallas Lake gas station for the night. I knew the upstairs could be pretty safe, provided I could find my way inside.
Except inside had half a dozen of Zeds (plus corpses), so as soon as I entered, Louisa got eaten alive.
My pristine truck that I had so carefully avoided to crash into lampposts barely survived the trip, but I made it to the Fallas Lake gas station for the night. I knew the upstairs could be pretty safe, provided I could find my way inside.
Except inside had half a dozen of Zeds (plus corpses), so as soon as I entered, Louisa got eaten alive.
It feels like a dumb death (in a game that doesn't have any great ones), and I'm frustrated that I couldn't be my usual careful self because I could not see not hear anything before going through the door.
But overall, I think it was a very productive run. Did not expect it to go this far. Not sure where I'll set up camp next time, but the South Muldraugh gas station is probably in my Top3 of gas stations in the basegame (behind Fallas Lake and Echo Creek).
But overall, I think it was a very productive run. Did not expect it to go this far. Not sure where I'll set up camp next time, but the South Muldraugh gas station is probably in my Top3 of gas stations in the basegame (behind Fallas Lake and Echo Creek).
Oh, f*ck. It's Christmas today ! They fixed all the stuff I was having issues with (and some of the other stuff too XD )
Also I definitely am glad that they added street names. This is a game changer for naming keys. But my God that must have been in the works for so long, given the size of the map !!!
https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/84895-42100-unstable-released/
Today after my doctor appointment I tried to start a new run... which ended up being me starting 8 successive runs. Well, successive but not successful, that's for sure. 7 of them ended on day one to day three with a bite, and the 8th one crashed while loading.
I guess surviving is not on the schedule for today.
I guess surviving is not on the schedule for today.
Also I'm having a weird issue with my mouse/keyboard. Suddenly they sort of freeze, and I can't move or click for a solid 30 seconds. During which of course I can't pause the game either, so Zeds are having a feast with my entrails while I vigorously shake my mouse like that's gonna solve anything.
That's a new one. An annoying one, at that.
That's a new one. An annoying one, at that.
Alright, let's try again today. Yesterday was a great day for me, and a lousy day for my latest character, Toni... she even triggered my first ever car alarm ! Almost 200hrs in this game and she found the only car that alerts the entire neighborhood of undead XD
I think just to be safe I'll create a new character for this morning, Toni might be jinxed.
Pretty good day today, actually ! I started a new run (and it didn't crash...) with a new character, Pamela (the most 90s name I could think of).
That's Pamela.
This hairstyle is called "cheerleader", so I decided to RP this a bit and pretend Pamela is a teenager who was on her way to celebrate July 4th with her snobby friends when times decided to end.
On July 9th, she woke up in western Riverside, not knowing why she was in that part of town, (the "not-so-posh" side), where her friends were, what was going on.
It was a pretty mid start, honestly. It didn't go bad, it didn't go well, it just went. It took almost all of day 1 to find a car.
So since I lost quite a bit of time finding a vehicle, I decided to stay in Riverside, as opposed to just driving to another town like I often do. I have played a bit in Riverside, but really most of the time I treat it as the place where I get my Lectrolux van, and then get the hell out of Dodge XD
Riverside has two gas stations, and for now I don't want to set up base anywhere but at a gas station, so I decided to pick the one next to the police station.
ACAB (All Cops Are Boids), by the way.
Riverside has two gas stations, and for now I don't want to set up base anywhere but at a gas station, so I decided to pick the one next to the police station.
ACAB (All Cops Are Boids), by the way.
It's pretty satisfying to clear that base spot, I must say XD Plus you have a perfect excuse : they're zomboids now ! It's totally fair game !
And I got some decent loot, not great, but look at Pam, the girl is running around in a cotton dress... getting some more sturdy gear was welcome.
The other problem with barely playing in Riverside is that the only times I've been there was... when I was looking for a car. I never looked for other stuff there. The first few times, when I had like 10hrs of game experience, I spent more time, but back then (she said, being 2 months older :P ) I didn't know what to look for. So all in all, it felt very blind.
I love that despite having sunk in a few hundreds (yes, plural) of hours into this game already, I still get to experience that.
I love that despite having sunk in a few hundreds (yes, plural) of hours into this game already, I still get to experience that.
(and I'll experience it again when I try something similar in Brandenburg, although there is no spawn there so I'll still need to... spawn in Riverside and get a car there XD )
For instance : I had no idea where to look in Riverside for a generator. I drove along the main street and found tons of stores and restaurants (my God, how many restaurants does one town need ?!), but nothing that would fit the bill for a generator.
On day 6 (six !) I finally remembered that there's a U-Store-It next to the second gas station, so I went there, and tried to break in without a sledgehammer.
Except of course, there's a super secure door I can't dismantle with my tiny screwdriver, so I destroy a tire iron on the door... I open the first storage unit, there's a crowbar XD Well.
Except of course, there's a super secure door I can't dismantle with my tiny screwdriver, so I destroy a tire iron on the door... I open the first storage unit, there's a crowbar XD Well.
Meanwhile it was the middle of the night, a super creepy time to be in a deserted storage facility.
There were a couple of Zeds in the storage units, and technically there's still at least one in there, because when I found a yellow generator (...I *really* need to start studying what the colors mean, I keep forgetting), I loaded it in the truck of my car and drove away faster than the speed of light XD
There were a couple of Zeds in the storage units, and technically there's still at least one in there, because when I found a yellow generator (...I *really* need to start studying what the colors mean, I keep forgetting), I loaded it in the truck of my car and drove away faster than the speed of light XD
I also looted all the groceries I could from various convenience stores, restaurants, delis, etc. that I found, and frankly I'm not convinced there isn't more. I have emptied the local bookshop. I have made a quick run to the Lectromax warehouse in search for a pipe wrench (I'll go back later for more non-urgent tools) and stole every sink I ran into, plus a couple of bathtubs, in prevision of the water shutoff.
Honestly, for a run that started meh, it's going pretty well.
Honestly, for a run that started meh, it's going pretty well.
I also have a Spiffo truck with a high-capacity trailer, a car, and a bike outside...
And check this on my screenshot above : IT'S ONLY JULY 23rd !
I have more water than I know what to use it for, I have one generator (though a second one wouldn't hurt, if only to place it across the street with the gas pumps), I have stockpiled food like it's my day job...
...and now I kinda feel, well, now what ?
Normally getting all of this up and running would take MUCH LONGER. And by the way, at the moment I don't even NEED the generator : there's still electricity on the grid (and the water hasn't been cutoff yet, either). So, it's like...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I guess I'm gonna start doing some of the long term stuff then. Which... I have never done.
Plant some crops before August starts ? Look into the building mechanics ?
Actually I'm a bit terrified now, because my setup is so sweet, I don't want to risk everything by going too far too fast.
In a handful of previous runs, it's not the Zomboids that killed me, but the greed. The feeling that "oh I'll just drive from Fallas Lake to Muldraugh and loot the warehouses there" or "I'm just going to empty Ovo Farms so I have more fridges, more eggs, more more more !" and then dying there when I would have been perfectly alive with what I had at home.
But when I think like that ("I'm going to stay home and not move from here anymore"), I'm also afraid that it's my mental illness talking. Agoraphobia saying that staying put is where there isn't any risk, and so it's safe (which... is not necessarily true).
It's really hard to get an idea of whether I am applying the right logic sometimes.
It's really hard to get an idea of whether I am applying the right logic sometimes.
Youtubers for Project Zomboid not being a white male Brit challenge.
Well, Pamela is dead. And as I predicted it happened when I tried to leave town (I went looking for skill books).
Greed. It's always greed.
Greed. It's always greed.
The mod about introducing menstrual cycles to a game that aims to be highly realistic is going well.
This notice needed to be posted within THREE days of the mod dev uploading the mod to the Steam Workshop...
That said this has to be my favorite comment, not just on the mod's page or on the Steam Workshop, but in the entire internet this week XD
These manbabies have been crushing zombie skulls for thousands of hours but are disgusted by the existence of periods.
Gamers gonna be gamers.
Gamers gonna be gamers.
Benjamin@ladyteruki Fucking hell 🤦♂️
Je ne suis pas goth@ladyteruki shall I start by saying, RiP Pamela.
@jenesuispasgoth : spoilers !