Project Zomboid has plenty of options for designing a character that suits your playstyle and can be proficient in many different areas of expertise. As your character levels specific skills, they unlock new traits and crafting recipes that can make surviving more than a distant prospect.
With 26 skills to level in Project Zomboid, it can be daunting to try to level them all, or even which ones you should focus on. With a lot of traits providing the same types of bonuses, it is only necessary to focus on a handful at a time that give you the best odds of survival in the zombie apocalypse.
1
Aiming
You might have noticed that as a starting character, guns in Project Zomboid have terrible aim, ensuring you hit one out of every ten shots or are forced to sit perfectly still and line up every shot. Being essential to late-game gameplay, you will want to slowly level your Aiming skill throughout your playthrough.
Aiming affects almost every aspect of firearms, from range to precision and accuracy and even recoil, which ramp up in proficiency every time you gain a level in Aiming. Other than how well you are able to shoot, Aiming also determines how much condition is lost per shot, which is important for guns as they can be rare and difficult to repair.
Shotguns are the best early-game weapon to train Aiming and Reloading.
2
Strength
Probably the most important skill to level in Project Zomboid, Strength affects many crucial gameplay mechanics. These are the chance to knock zombies back in combat (and how far they are pushed), how much damage your melee weapons do, your maximum encumbrance, the chance to force open windows, and the chance to successfully climb tall fences.
Each of these skills can be the difference between life and death and are used more often than anything else in the course of a normal playthrough. Gaining high levels of Strength also gives you free traits, such as Stout and Strong, both increasing your carry weight and knockback.
3
Fitness
While Fitness affects a number of interactions in the world, the only ones that matter are reducing your endurance drain and how fast you make attacks. This skill can also prevent your character from being tripped by crawling zombies and automatically pushing them away when getting bit.
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This skill is crucial for general survivability, as having low endurance can be an easy way to get surrounded and torn to shreds. Also, leveling your Fitness to level nine gets you the Athletic trait, which increases your running speed and further reduces endurance loss.
4
Nimble
Project Zomboid has some overlap with their skills and none more so than nimble, which, like Lightfooted and Sneaking, affects how quiet your footsteps are. However, unlike those skills, Nimble also affects your movement speed in all animations, including and especially in combat.
With a high nimble skill, you won’t have to keep kiting and running from zombies while also being able to climb through windows and over fences much faster. This is, unfortunately, one of the most frustrating skills to level as it requires walking in the combat stance everywhere you go.
If you want a stealth-focused character, Nimble, Lightfooted, Sneaking, and Sprinting are the best skills to level.
5
Maintenance
Every time you hit an enemy or object, your weapon might lose a bit of its condition, which a high-maintenance skill protects against. A very high maintenance skill reduces the chance for your weapon to lose any amount of its condition, keeping it viable for a very long time.
This is important for weapons you find later on, such as machetes and katanas, which do impressive damage but quickly break. This skill also affects how much an item is repaired each time you repair it, and since items get less condition each time you repair it, you will want to keep repairs to a minimum.
6
Carpentry
Like Metalworking, the Carpentry skill affects your ability to build and repair structures, in this case, any made out of wood. Unless you plan on building a metal fortress using every ounce of propane in the game, carpentry will be used much more often for more crucial tasks.
The higher your Carpentry skill, the easier it will be to remove specific objects in the environment, such as crates, as well as how loudly you perform those tasks. It’s also fairly simple to level, as trees are more than common and reinforcing doors and windows is both essential and levels your skill.
7
Mechanics
Mechanics is a skill that is almost exclusively used to repair and work on vehicles by replacing and repairing their various parts. Since most vehicles in Project Zomboid are either heavily destroyed or very rarely contain full health parts, being able to modify your own vehicles becomes essential.
Especially after driving in and through hordes of zombies, no vehicle you will find will last very long without extremely careful gameplay. Since this is a more late-game skill, you should wait to level this skill until after you have found the necessary recipe magazines to allow you to work on specific types of cars.
You will need at least Metalworking level three to repair some car parts such as doors and gas tanks.
8
Long Blunt
While there are a wide variety of weapons that give players options for developing their own playstyle, if you want the widest variety of weapons with the most efficient gameplay, long blunt weapons are undeniably the best. The main reason for this is that there are more long blunt weapons than any other type in the game.
Despite having lower base damage numbers than long blades and axes, long blunt weapons do not damage gear or armor that zombies and players wear, allowing you to get full-health armored vests. The best long blunt weapon, the sledgehammer, has one of the highest damage numbers in the game.
- Released
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November 8, 2013
- Developer(s)
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The Indie Stone
- Publisher(s)
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The Indie Stone
- Multiplayer
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Local Multiplayer
- Engine
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LWJGL
- ESRB
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m
- How Long To Beat
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60 Hours
- Steam User Rating
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94% (November 2, 2023)