Since I'm in so much pain and exhaustion from my period, I'm slowed down ; I decide that instead of trying to fight them, I'm going to walk all the way around the house to get out of their line of sight.
...Did I mention there's a fifth Zed on the other side of the house ? No ? Probably because I see it only now. I have no choice but to try and kill it before the others hear his calls for reinforcement. I push him a few times, he falls, I stomp his dumb green face. All good.

All good ?

...

I come home.
I put away the food I just looted in the first house (hey, we're not gonna waste steaks just because we're about to die).
I go upstairs to the first aid storage (GRAND idea to put it up the stairs, by the way).
I sit in front of the storage, on the floor.
In a pool of my own blood, I unwrap my bandages.
I pick up tweezers to extract the glass shards in both of my feet.
I apply alcohol wipes to disinfect wounds that had already started to fester.
I change my tampon.

I swallow a couple of pills for pain management, before dragging my exhausted carcass to the bedroom.
I open the storage by the door and put on new boots.
I put myself to sleep on the bed, on the side where the pillow is.
I gently press ESC.
I log off.

That's enough Project Zomboid for today.

Took a sleeping pill IRL then out of habit launched the game.

Well I don't like to waste, so I'm just gonna start a doomed run with a character that I fully expect to kill tonight XD

I wanted to shake things up a bit, and decided that my latest run would NOT be as an electrician. You know, in a "you've been playing this game for a few hundred hours now, you're a big girl, you can take the kiddie wheels off" kind of way ?
...
So far my entire two weeks of existence have been dedicated to looking for the damn generator manual. I have found FOUR generators, not one manual. And I've already visited three towns.

Honestly next run I go back to electrician.

I knew PZ was going to spit in my face with this generator manual thing, but the game actually spit in my mouth...
...I just started playing with my new character Noreen, and the convenience store where I spawned (I have a mod that spawns me in random places, as you can tell by the FoW on the minimap) HAS THE GENERATOR MANUAL. Like, first thing.

Is Noreen an electrician ? Why yes, yes she is. As a consequence, does she need the generator manual ? No, she does not.
That damn game XD

*logs off PZ*
*goes to bed*
*launches PZ playthrough videos to fall asleep to*
*gets urge to get back up to play PZ*
*stops PZ videos*
*stares at ceiling thinking about PZ*

I both love and hate that phase XD
...And it shows.

I found a katana !

How rare is the katana in Project Zomboid ? Well, it's the first one I find since I started playing this game (~100hrs with the arrr🏴‍☠️ version and now ~500hrs on Steam).

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD ! For the first time EVER, I made it to September 1st !!! That's 1 month and 24 days !
New personal record, and it's even more miraculous when you know that I had not been able to beat my previous record of 1 month and 6 days... SINCE EARLY JUNE.

https://mastodon.social/deck/@ladyteruki/114632847366184598

Since then, all my characters (...ok, most of my characters) have died around the 1 month mark. In one case, 1 month and 5 days >_< And now look at me, almost 2 months this time !

Nonono but you still don't know the best part.

Before I started this run, I DLed a new mod that spawns me in any GigaMart on the map at random. I was like "well, this will be a nice change to die in a supermarket for once". It has locations I've never visited in the list of spawns, including Irvington where I rarely spend enough time to look for the GigaMart there, I usually only come to town to get some farm animals XD There are still locations I haven't seen in this giant map !

Supermarkets are usually very populated with Zeds, as are commercial areas in general (meaning other buildings around supermarkets are also crowded), so I had very few hopes of living very long wherever I'd spawn. I just wanted to travel and see the world, you know ?

CHECK. THIS. OUT :

https://b42map.com/?12570x2547

I SPAWNED IN A SUPERMARKET IN LOUISVILLE !

For those who don't know PZ very well and humor me still, let me explain : Louisville is the biggest city on the (giant) map, known for being deadly because there's more zombies there than anywhere else. I had never stepped foot in Louisville before that spawn, and now IT'S MY BEST RUN EVER !

I am so happy with this run. I've finally started using the building mechanics, too... it's not much for now, because I need a lot of materials and I don't know where anything is (...because again, I had never played in Louisville before !), but it's slowly taking shape !

Other than the storage I showed above, I also have (or, well, have a WIP of) :
- a giant kitchen
- an armory, even though right now I'm mostly stomping Zeds

- a delightfully packed pantry (I mean, I spawned in a supermarket, right ?! and I found out three weeks in that there's a lot of other places to loot food nearby, sadly most of it was rotten by then)
- a garage area (I have a mod that will allow me to build garage doors once I'm high lvl enough in Welding)
- and um, the bedroom is not much to look at for now, but I do have a real bed, so, it's a win

Also check out my collection of vehicles !

Soooo... I had an issue with a mod in my glorious run above. I was really upset because my fps was worse than watching a PowerPoint, when everything had been smooth before that update.
Eventually I had to admit that I couldn't play Emilià's run anymore, which really was a letdown. I had reached 2 months with her !

After an obvious phase of pouting, I started a new run with the same settings minus the bugged mod, and...

...MY SECOND RUN IS FLAWLESSLY GOING WELL !

I have reached September 1st and things are looking pretty decent. The base is not as advanced, because I did run into issues I didn't have the first time (in terms of vehicles, in particular), and I also spent a few days exploring a corner of Louisville I hadn't seen yet. It led me to discovering a brick factory, and I decided to clear its entrance. I killed 55 Zeds in one day ! My personal record (again, I'm on Builder settings) at least so far.

Now I have bricks for days, sadly I'm having the hardest time leveling up my Masonry skill... Nonetheless I'm doing great. I have enough food to survive the winter, I think, maybe without adventuring outside too often at first ? If I can live just two more months, it's going to be something to worry about XD

This tells me that Emilià's run, though it clearly got lucky a few times, was not a statistical anomaly : I *am* getting better at surviving.

A wise trio once said :

"Don’t fake, Don’t say, We’re late, 2 months
Let’s make, Same pace, Touch base, 2 months
Fun fact, Ice break, All day, 2 months
Don’t fake, Don’t say, We’re late, 2 months"

She built stairs.
She went upstairs to start adding a ceiling.
She went down the stairs.
She grabbed more planks for the ceiling.
She went up the stairs again.
She went too fast and fell on the floor below.
She had a deep wound requiring stitching.
She limped to the first aid supplies.
She stitched her leg just before bleeding out.
She left out a sigh of relief.
She went up the stairs again.
She slowly & carefully climbed the stairs.

Then, once at the top, she took an extra step into the void.