Project Zomboid is perhaps the most unforgiving survival game on PC. It’s not that it’s the hardest. It’s more…the pure indifference. One of my most recent characters, I had managed to keep alive for more than three months. Stupidly I decided to check out Louisville. Attempting to run from a horde, I tripped over, dropped my machete and flashlight, and, well, you know what happened next. With The Indie Stone still tweaking build 42 unstable, a potential new Project Zomboid update has just been teased and, with changes to XP, crafting, and the zombies themselves, it could make staying alive much easier.
So, the first thing to note is that this would-be patch is not final. The Project Zomboid team naturally tests new patches internally before releasing them to the public, but it also allows selected streamers and video makers to demo the updates and discuss the potential additions on their channels. ‘Drunkonlife’ is one such streamer, and has just shared the complete list of changes for what could be the first big update to Zomboid’s build 42 unstable. Please keep in mind that anything outlined here may not actually make it into the public version of the survival game.
The potential update is massive. There are more than 150 tweaks, changes, and additions, and a similar number of fixes. Take survivalist safehouses, for example. Until now, you would have to wait 30 in-game days until they spawned the best loot. In the prospective update, that would be cut down to just ten days. Those same safehouses would also be more likely to contain skill books, firearms, and ammunition, and the serious, late-game loot would appear after 90 in-game days, rather than 180.
If you find bandit zombies, their backpacks would be more likely to contain armor and weapon recipe magazines and schematics. Similarly, if you find an abandoned bandit vehicle, in the prospective new update there would be an increased chance of a key spawning on one of the nearby bandit zombies.
The new update would also increase the speed at which you boil water by ten times, and allow you to use empty beer, pop, and food cans as containers for boiling. On a similar note, the update, as it stands, will let you disinfect bandages using boiling water, and if you want to build the Maintenance skill, you would gain XP twice as quickly.
There’s also a very powerful prospective buff for the Veteran occupation and the Desensitized trait – if your character has either of these, they will no longer get the Panic moodle at all. Trees, on the other hand, could be significantly nerfed. The potential update eradicates ‘death by tree,’ so you can no longer get bleeding scratches and deep lacerations when running through the woods.
There are new blacksmithing recipes, chicken nuggets and fish fingers can be eaten uncooked without any risk, and if you’re inside a building and a zombie crashes through the window, as soon as their head is through the frame, they will become fully visible to you, possibly eliminating that fussy problem where they can be all the way in and on their feet before they pop into view.
Also, if the update remains unchanged, you will only gain unhappiness when collecting items off of human bodies, and not when collecting items generally. You also won’t get stressed, even when looting corpses. The full, would-be notes from Drunkonlife’s video also explain how the Old Generator could become significantly louder (and therefore more likely to attract zombies) than its newer counterparts.
There’s no word on when this update might be released, or whether all or any of these changes will remain intact. But hopefully, whatever The Indie Stone launches next, unstable 42 will continue to get better.
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