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 !
Also a personal record : killing 360 zombies in one run !
I play in Sandbox mode based on Builder settings, so the population is fairly low, to be fair ; in Apocalypse mode I'm sure this would be a Monday. But still.
This is also the first time ever I've maxed out a skill (Carpentry, in this case, though ironically enough Emilià is not a carpenter by trade, but an electrician).
The list of skills is very long so you don't see it, but I'm also almost maxed out in a couple of other skills. I have read all the books I could, but I'm missing quite a few ; also, I haven't really started to plant any crops because I was having issues with some of the equipment (though now it's almost ready to be done).
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 !
Of course now that I've bragged about it, I'm going to die next time I log into my save. Obviously.
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.
...That I keep having my best runs in Louisville is pretty amazing. I know I'm playing on kiddie pool settings, but still.
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.
Died on September 16th, though. New record !
Sadly pressing the F12 key did not take the screenshot, for some reason, so you'll have to take my word for it.
I was playing and thought : "damn, I had never noticed how realistic the thunderstorms are in PZ !"
...when I got up to get something to drink, I realized the thunderstorm was IRL 😅
Huh. I open Steam this morning and what do I find ? The screenshot that yesterday wasn't appearing ! I have this new mod that displays more complete stats (including XP gained), every time I go to sleep I get a report, plus when I died it showed me a thorough recap.
So yeah, here's "proof" that I did survive for... 69 days.
Nice.
Aw, man... I missed the opportunity to take a screenshot of my 712hrs in PZ on Steam...
So um, yeah, bought the game legally 3 months ago and here we are. Add to that the ~100hrs with the arrr🏴☠️ version and that's quite a bit of gameplay since I started this thread in May.
As the prophecy foretold, my summer was spent in Kentucky : https://mastodon.social/@ladyteruki/114514004069795808
#ProjectZomboid
Last night I was playing (...not exactly the surprising bit of my toot) and really felt in the zone. Things were not going particularly my way, but they were not bad either. It's not that RNGesus was kind to me, it's just that I felt in rhythm with the game. Good or bad, I had things under control.
At some point I instinctively did a 180 to go kill more Zeds a couple of houses over, and it hit me : "wow, instead of avoiding them I now run towards Zombies" 🤩 Precious feeling.
Part of it is that I have kept using that mod which tells me how many Zeds I have killed every night. I noticed that when after a few days it gives me an average, the next day I'm like "ok, let's try to beat it by one tomorrow" and it makes me look for combat rather than invest in stealth.
Another part of it is that I have installed my first ever modded map, West Point Expansion, and I looove the layout. My base is setup in one of the warehouses in the industrial area, I'm in-between two gas stations but not AT the gas station like I usually do, I'm taking chances with that too ! I'm working towards the silos, I want to explore them soon.
I'm almost 800hrs in on Steam, which means close to 900hrs in total since May WHICH IS TOTALLY HEALTHY I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT and I have a different kind of fun now that I am more confident. I love it.
Can you tell when in my latest run I found a katana ?
#ProjectZomboid
You know what I love about Project Zomboid ? Its storytelling.
All of the storytelling is environmental. Since you're the only survivor you'll ever meet (at least in singleplayer, but Build 42 doesn't have multiplayer yet anyway, and the planned NPC builds are not in the near future), there's noone to tell you anything. So you gather stories from what you see. What you find. What you understand.
It's fantastic.
Randomized stories - PZwiki
Because PZ relies so much on RNG, these stories can combine in infinite ways completely accidentally. But also, there's a number of unintended stories that emerge from gameplay.
Last night I ran into an example, but first, some context.
PZ doesn't have children. All the zombies, and of course character creation for the survivors, are adult. Zero size variation, nothing. In fact, children are not even mentioned. The lore doesn't bring up what happened in daycares when the Knox infection hit, there is no mention of people terrified about how to protect their kids, nothing. Aside from a handful of places over the entire map, you won't event find cribs in houses, and very rarely in furniture stores.
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Knox_Event
There are a couple of toy stores, and objects that can be associated to kids, as well as a number of schools and daycares on the map, but if you go there, you'll only ever find adult-sized Zeds anyway.
A lot of it seems to come from issues regarding the game's rating, which I get. In a way, it works to the game's ambient despair anyway. This world has no future. There is no "next generation" to protect from the Knox virus, there is nothing to save at all. It's all lost.
Last night I was looking for books my collection is missing, and naturally I went to a nearby school, having already looted nearby bookstores. The West Point school is not as fancy as you could expect it to be considering the posh town that surrounds it, but it does have a school library (and a lunch cafeteria that I also needed to loot).
As I went, room by room, clearing the area of all zombies, I killed this guy in the toilets :
The adult-sized zombie, the one wearing jeans and a green polo shirt, was probably a child or maybe a teenager. Because in PZ, you're so used to connecting the narrative dots because of the whole environment storytelling thing, you can picture it... When the Knox virus started spreading, that kid was terrified. He packed his teddy bear in his backpack to get courage and comfort from it. But the teddy bear can't protect from the virus. Nothing can. That kid died alone in the toilets.
(well, he undied, I guess, but you know)
It's just a zombie, randomly generated to spawn in various places, here a school's bathroom. With randomly generated clothes, here jeans and a green polo shirt. With randomly generated accessories, here a backpack. With randomly generated contents, here a teddy bear. It could have been anything else.
I've found zombies in schools that were carrying a bottle of dye or a set of masonry tools. It just happened that this one formed a story. I love this about the game.
Less tragic, the other day I killed a male Zed with 2 wallets in his inventory. When I opened them, I found two credit cards... each with female names. I just killed a thief or con man !
As I cleaned the brain splattered on my leather jacket, I felt morally justified.
Oh, sorry ! Didn't mean to interrupt something... 🫣
#ProjectZomboid
Me in my bed : "Hmm, I'm not really feeling the settings for the latest run. Maybe I should just start a new one. Should I start a new one next time I'm on the computer ?"
Project Zomboid : *game update goes live*
Me, as the sound of a thousand cries echoes through the Steam Workshop's broken mods : "Yeah, I should start a new one"
Today I started testing the modded map Tikitown, and so far I quite like it. I briefly drove through an industrial area where I feel like I'm going to have a lot of fun exploring, but for now I'm in the city center setting up camp in the food market, and there's SO MUCH FOOD TO LOOT around it ! Cafes, restaurants, bakeries, etc. Very satisfying to grab all that food and put it in my bag XD
So far it's one of the most interestingly designed modded maps I've seen.
...As opposed to Coryerdon, which really felt rushed or unfinished, which I tested a few days ago. What I've seen of that place felt lazy and uninspired. Rows of copy/pasted houses with no landscaping, just plopped on the grass, not even some kind of path leading to their garages or anything... there was one open mall/food court that was fine, but everything else was so uninteresting ! It lacked detail and care, which, when you're supposed to want to explore and loot, ISN'T GREAT.
Some of the other modded maps I have tested earliers include Greenleaf, Grapeseed, Taylorsville... which weren't bad exactly, but too "small town" for my taste. Greenleaf is full of details, and has some nice environmental storytelling (thanks to some unique tiles I have never seen elsewhere), but I hated how spread out the buildings were. Grapeseed is cute, there are some great base spots (my favorite has been the tool store in front of the gas station) but again, too much of a small town feel.
A map I sort of liked was Willowbrook Bastion, which is clearly designed by and for Chinese players, and given that it's it's the middle of Kentucky, some suspension of disbelief is a bit necessary XD Or you can just pretend Kentucky has a giant "China town" near Muldraugh, I guess :P Some buildings were very cool, I found an abandoned supermarket of some kind that had been emptied and barricated... well, not so empty that it didn't have 50-ish Zeds inside ^_^; But you can't see that until -
ladyteruki
