ZED ZONE – Beginners Tips

Character Creation

• The weight limit is very important, so try to choose a +weight talent, as for the backpacker, only some weight limit increase has been found so far. However, you can choose all the talents and it does not affect character creation. This game allows you to pack a set of bags, so space is not as important as weight.
• Melee/firearm/bow, with firearm recommended. However, no matter what genre you play, you should prefer to add damage, as these weapons have durability (and ammo count) and weapon accessories have a limit on the number of times they can be used, so a higher attack means less hassle in repairing and building ammo.
• In terms of attributes, Spirit is currently not found to be very useful. Stamina is the most useful. You can shuffle your points as many times as you like once you’re in the game. (Open the map and press EQ to toggle the function).
• Reading is not useful (but it will be in a later version).

Map Selection

• Don’t choose a small map first, because I played a small map myself and found out that there is no hospital, no gas station, no merchant.
• Suggest selecting a map with the most guns, the least vegetation and the most towns.
• You should take a look in the game to see if the above key facilities (gas station and merchants) are available, far away or not, if they are not ideal, you can rebuild the map.
• There are many gun shops and container sites, so don’t worry about them, but it’s better to have a car park close by so you can find your first car.

Building a Home

• If the merchant survives, he should be protected by some game mechanics (e.g. no monsters nearby, e.g. the merchant will fight back).
• There are some walls around the merchant that look invincible, so you can use them.
• Why build a home first? I thought this game was all about scavenging and living a miserable life, but it’s not. First of all, if you build a well, you won’t be short of water, and secondly, if you have the negative talent “Eat”, you’ll easily run into bears in the wild, so you won’t be short of meat at all. Even if you can’t, it’s still easy to hunt deer.
• How do you mine? Use an airsoft gun (given to you by a dead brother on the ground at the beginning) or a crossbow (choose one of four weapons at the beginning, but remember to add the skill to recycle arrows). If you really want to do something old fashioned, we recommend to move the mines together with Q and then use the pickaxe to AOE, it saves a lot of stamina.
• The same goes for trees.
• In fact, not only these, but also the abandoned cars can be fought, and they can drop a lot of high level resources. Can’t get past the fence? Smash it, or shoot it with your gun. Anything else you don’t like to see, shoot it all down and you’ll get resources.
• There are more ways to get through, such as hitting them with your car (use a car of lesser quality, but keep the best quality car for your car).
• What about ammunition? You can build your own. But there are two things to keep in mind: A: you need to have some ammunition as a master for unlocking; B: you need gunpowder.
• So, the only ammunition that doesn’t require gunpowder is airsoft bullets and arrows, which can be used for mining and demolishing cars and walls in the early stages.
• Gunpowder = charcoal + saltpeter, saltpeter is the greyish (not the whitest) crystal ore, charcoal can be used to build a few bonfires and burn slowly.
• Don’t throw away glass bottles and mineral water bottles, they are used to make chemical benches and glue.

Gameplay

• Wear up to 4 pieces of clothing, but usually 3 pieces + a cloak to protect you from the rain. You can wear 4 pairs of trousers.
• The clothes and trousers have pockets, so the stuff you put in them doesn’t count as weight (god), and they are quite spacious (8*5 a piece). So you can put all your food and drink, and stackable materials/ammunition in your clothes and trousers.
• Because you can pack a bag, you can put a lot of stuff in the car, so you don’t need to build a box at home.
• You can also carry a bag on your body, but it doesn’t save weight, so don’t carry too many layers (and the bag itself has weight).
• If you are familiar with firearms, you can dismantle any extra firearms into parts. If you are familiar with firearms, you can dismantle them into parts, but keep the ones that can be modified.
• Do not use multi-tools to open locks, but use brass or wire to make a lock pick. (Save the awl as a multi-tool too).
• You can actually pick doors or containers directly. Save the lock pick for a safe (this one is not allowed).
• You can cook and eat meat after it has expired. If the cooked meat expires again, you can’t eat it, so you won’t run out of meat. If you get up and cook 3-4 pieces of meat a day, you’ll be able to get through the day. (Cooked meat has a shelf life of 3 days).
• Hand-rolling things will consume more materials, so try to find a workbench. For example, a skill-boosting potion costs 30+2 special ingredients, whereas it only costs 10+1 to make it at the potion bench. Hand-rolling bullets also costs more.
• Once you get past the early stages, you can be a bit more aggressive, cranking up the monster count, making lots of bullets, using cans and bombs, and making skill potions out of zombie material.
• Regarding the choice of vehicles, if you’re just playing around, then a luxury SUV is good, but this thing is a gas guzzler, and the game is apocalyptic, so it’s unlikely to supply a lot of gas. Of course, you can make oil from fat, or you can stuff your trousers with daggers and slaughter zombies wherever you go.

Weapons

At the moment my usual setup is:

• No. 1: .50 air rifle (with a small sound, and ammunition that doesn’t run out of gunpowder).
• No. 2: Assault rifle or light machine gun (preferably a large caliber to provide fire suppression).
• No. 3: Wrist Destroyer (a pistol shotgun, for close combat).

(Carry an Uzi or other small calibre gun in your trouser pocket as a backup)

Weapons found to be useful so far include.

Melee

• Samurai sword

Gun

• .300 Magnum rifle
• M249 machine gun
• Gundam Drop Taser
• Wrist Destroyer (shotgun for pistol, with 12 gauge deer shells)

Others

• Tool hammers and spanners cannot be built, so remember to take them when scavenging.
• Large oil drums and plastic drums are the largest containers, remember to take them if you see them.
• On a rainy day, collect some raw water and keep it there, it is the raw material for sulphuric acid (not clean water).
• Raw water and sulphuric acid can be placed directly in the chemistry table, no need to use containers.
• There are plenty of plastic bottles and jars on the beach (the east coast).
• Don’t get into the habit of drinking soft drinks and eating cans, as they may go bad one day (the shelf life is too random) and turn into drink assassins. Carry clean water with you (it never goes bad), and fried pork chops (they go bad in 3 days, so you’ll be checking them from time to time).
• Make a rucksack as soon as possible, a hand-rag rucksack, a leather rucksack for the workbench, which is the biggest rucksack, bigger than a hiking bag.
• Besides supplying a torch, batteries are one of the materials used to repair the scope, so make sure you have some.
• If you have a low fever, most likely caused by staying up all night, the solution is to build a well and drink water to death, because drinking water will cool you down.