On its surface, Project Zomboid is a world of brutal survivalism, but check under the hood, specifically the enormous patch notes that The Indie Stone has been publishing since the arrival of unstable build 42, and you can see the delicate dance of values, metrics, and rebalances that really makes Knox Country turn. More than State of Decay 2, Dying Light, or DayZ, I think Zomboid is the best game of its kind on PC, but the latest version is called ‘unstable’ for a reason – there are still improvements to be made. The latest Project Zomboid update provides one such example. If the new looted building system has felt unfair or askew to you so far, The Indie Stone is apparently on the case.
Barring multiplayer or the best Project Zomboid mods, the entire world of the survival game is empty except for you and the undead – NPCs might arrive in future builds, but for now, the existence of other survivors is only implied through metagame events. Maybe you hear a gunshot in the distance or a blood-curdling scream. It seems like other people are out there, but you never meet them. On the contrary, you will find evidence of their survival efforts. Project Zomboid build 42 includes looted buildings. That means that some houses and other points of interest will already be stripped bare of supplies before you get to them.
For some players, it’s a welcome idea. Looted buildings create a greater sense of the wider Zomboid world and also force you to think more creatively – rather than relying on canned food, bottled water, and the contents of the GigaMart DIY aisle, you need to grow crops, build rain collectors, and craft your own weapons. For others, it’s preemptive: why are there looted buildings before NPCs? It’s also badly balanced. The problem is that too many buildings are being cleared out too early in the game, and that areas that seem like they ought to be off limits – towns that are full of zombies, for example – are still, inexplicably, emptied of loot.
And so we come to the latest Project Zomboid update for unstable build 42. There are myriad fixes, tweaks, additions, and improvements in here, but primarily, The Indie Stone is addressing the looted building conundrum. First up, the new update halves the maximum size of buildings that can be prelooted – all told, fewer buildings on your map should now be looted bare when you find them. Basements, which were added at the start of unstable 42, will be comparatively less looted than areas above ground. Buildings that have already been ransacked will also have more broken windows and missing doors, and potentially more corpses on the ground around them, so you know they’re likely empty without having to go inside.
Perhaps most significantly, in looted buildings, there is now the possibility that a survivor or bandit zombie will spawn. These zombies ought to be carrying backpacks which contain some of the best items that would otherwise have appeared in the building itself, the idea being that someone tried to loot the place, got killed, and you are able to kill them and recover some of their survivalist treasure. As of the current update, The Indie Stone says that these zombies are “rare,” but their addition comes some way towards compensating players who find trashed buildings.
Before now, it would take only 56 in-game days until any building marked for looting would become completely ravaged. That window of time has now been expanded to 90 in-game days, meaning you have longer to explore Knox Country and its buildings before they’re pillaged by the other off-screen survivors. The new update also adds a fresh trait, Mason, which provides two points in the Masonry skill from spawn. You can also now craft an improvised screwdriver, and short bat weapons have been very slightly nerfed.
We’re perhaps a little ways yet from a completed build 42, but these changes to looted buildings should hopefully bring us closer to a happy medium. We’ll see what arrives in the new Zomboid update.
In the meantime, try some of the other best zombie games, or maybe the best multiplayer games on PC.
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