How To Level ALL Skills In Project Zomboid FAST For Beginners! Project Zomboid Crafting Skills Tips!

[@clickroach]

If you are going to do slow-moving foraging, crouching gives a 10% radius bonus. But combat stance gives a massive 33% bonus and lets you grind nimble at the same time.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Interesting! Thanks for that!

[@techrama9642]

🤔 Whooo

[@Telopead]

But if you’re at the beginning of a wilderness run. Just walk in search mode. Percentage bonus isn’t worth it because your base search range is too small that you’re better off to cover more ground.

[@TheTrueCallen151]

@@Telopead If you're a park ranger(which gives the biggest buff to the search radius) or any other profession that buffs the search radius, that can be a powerful combination to expand search radius

[@CARL-sd7gd]

Damn didnt know ty

[@bpdlr]

Just a tip when you come to levelling Tailoring. Ripping clothes for XP can leave you with a lot of materials and it can be surprising how much space (weight) this takes up in your inventory. Each item of thread has multiple uses, and all the thread you gain from ripping clothes is partial - if you expand the stack of thread you'll see that each item is mostly only 25-50% of it's full capacity, but it still takes up 0.1 units of encumbrance. If you combine the stack (right click and choose "Add to" > "Consolidate all") you can reduce the number of thread items to a fraction of the original stack.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Making notes over here.

[@tw33144154]

Thank you!!

[@Sylphinator]

Theres a bug ish for the ripping of clothing atm? You cannot have them in your pack and "rip all" it doesnt work... Not sure if it is by design or a bug... However.. You can drop all clothing at your feet ( in a safe location ) and do it that way. Or right out of zombies bodies if they are in a pile. Depending though this may not be safe lol. ^.~

[@tw33144154]

@@Sylphinator I was having this the last few days too. I found a comment in a forum that it has to do with favorited clothes. I tested this and it works, just move your 'to rip' clothes to another bag and rip from there. I think when you 'rip all' the game tries to include favorited clothes so when it hits one of those it just stops.

[@Paygelove]

@@tw33144154 I don’t favourite my clothes and it was still doing it to me

[@warpedwhimsical]

First aid leveling is so ridiculous. Imagine waking up and one day and being like “I don’t think I’m good enough at removing glass shards from my feet… I’m gonna practice on myself til I am”

[@flextape467]

Dismantle enough watches to hotwire cars

[@genericdialogue7269]

Hitting people with a crowbar enough times till your katana is almost invincable

[@bsodcat]

Yeah, I feel like at least for MP if you can successfully bandage or remove glass from another player that should give you more experience and increase your own recovery time.

[@Healcraft]

yeah really, you should be able to put a zombie corpse on some glass shards and practice that way

[@ZM1306]

​@@Healcraft Could practice all sorts of procedures on a corpse.... excellent practice... Have your character practicing appendectomys by level 6! XD Would also be interesting to then have infected sutures and stuff... if used without sterilizing can cause Zombifacation... Be high level first aid on a server but don't like someone bust out the "special" stitches... lol Apocalypse Dr's may not have taken an oath.

[@zorthecruel6558]

BIG tip for electrical leveling: The disassembling the big industrial stoves and stove hoods surprisingly gives electrical exp and not metalworking. A LOT of electrical exp per disassemble. Far more than anything else. So it is very worth it to read the beginner electrical book, and hit up restaurant kitchens and school cafeterias and you can get 1 or 2 levels surprisingly fast. No tedious watch disassembly needed.(and the stoves and hoods never have loot in them, so this should be a MP friendly tip as well)

[@BorzoiSpotProductions]

Holy shit, thank you for this nugget. I've been doing the watches and TVs method since I started playing- This sounds so much more convenient

[@zorthecruel6558]

@@saureco Only screwdriver. That's also the best way to tell which it will level when checking something.

[@TheJunnutin]

Oh man... Thank you!

[@MrDark086]

Industrial fryers do this as well. Dismantled a spiffos last night and got a healthy amount of xp for it

[@debebi]

You can also do the arcade machines in restaurants and computers in office areas for good xp as well

[@cannedcream]

Another suggestion for quick Carpentry leveling; if you're in a location away from base and don't want to lug a bunch of planks back; use the wood and nails to construct a bunch of crates. Then deconstruct them. Then use the remaining pieces to build them up again. Repeat until there are not enough planks or nails. Works great in places like restaurants, bars, or offices where there is a ton of wood furniture around to stock into one safe place in the building so you can construct in peace.

[@Webdeo2906]

Yeah my nails too precious for that

[@synbioskuun]

Stick traps have one advantage over crate traps: birds and mice are the only animals that can be found in urban zones. If you're based up in an urban location, you can set up stick traps close to your home(or on your rooftop garden) before going out on a loot run, then return to a hopefully full source of poultry. Bait is also incredibly easy to get - just dig up as much dirt near you for worms.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Can definitely be handy in urban areas! Just gotta be careful you're not within 75 tiles when the clock strikes the hour.

[@xxxtrackerxxx7769]

@@MrAtomicDuck NO traps are working properly if you are close to the traps itself ? what exactly are 75 tiles? how much is one tile^^ how can i measure this ?

[@Mrmcjzptlc]

​@xxxTRACKERxxx a tile is a single Block, a single step you take . Basically every square to step on or can build on (or has anything on it) is a tile. It's as easy as stepping 75 blocks away from where you operate closest to the traps and you got it.

[@unicornmilk6158]

@@Mrmcjzptlc Does this count for vertical placement as well? I hear we can place traps in the sky and it will still catch rabbits.

[@gabriel300010]

Or, kill a bunch of zombies, then check the bodies later for maggots

[@sirshallotrok8533]

As a Zomboid player with over 1000 hours into the game. You taught me a couple new things. Very informative video. 10/10!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Good to hear!

[@Phistandantilus]

A Key detail you didn't mention about Cooking; cooking XP is the same for every ingredient or unit of items cooked, so multiple items/ingredients gives multiple XP rewards, thus higher overall XP per cooking session. I find some of the best items to make for cooking xp is Bacon Bits. you need a kitchen knife or hunting knife, but with it, you can cut 1 Bacon into 4 bacon strips, and then 16 bacon bits, thus getting 16 XP rewards for essentially cooking one bacon. further, bacon bits become a spice item, so you can add them to virtually anything, and they're even usable as bait in traps. aside from that, foraging a high number of bugs and roasting them all at once can grant many XP rewards. the game doesn't care *what* you're cooking, only that it *can* be cooked, and then *is* cooked.

[@thermiteturtle3486]

Cooking eggs from egg cartons is similarly good in my experience, 12 eggs from each carton goes a long way, and then you can add them to food for more

[@Indrakrn]

You don't even need to cook to get level 8 with live and living, books, and fast learner

[@kevinm.4846]

You can also put rotten bacon bits as a spice into food and it won't make the food rotten

[@BloodDraco122]

I would like to mention as well that VHS tapes for Carpentry, Cooking and Survival (Fishing, Foraging, Trapping) are SINLE USE per character even after watching it previously in the first 8-9 days. So it might be worth trying to watch the shows as early as possible and keeping the tapes on hand if you want to try and max out a skill that is difficult to level.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Yep!

[@BloodDraco122]

@@MrAtomicDuck One other thing I forgot to mention in regards to trapping. There is another trap that is not crafted, found in resident homes and some resturant backrooms and thats the Mouse trap. It can be used in urban zones at any time of day. From my experience it's better to use these en-mass around farms and trailer park type zones for the highest effiency but town type zones also work at 50%. Cheese (naturally) works best for the highest chance to catch a mouse.

[@nerfherder4284]

@@BloodDraco122 mouse traps are great, you don't have to be very far away for them to catch something indoors, I've had excellent luck with peanut butter as well, I think you get 5-6 traps baited per jar.

[@exiledcaptain]

Pausing the video tapes when you level up to read the skill book and then watching the tape again to get the rest of the xp is the best way to use them, i usually skip life and living now and use that strategy.

[@AskJ4x]

@@exiledcaptain I know this is very late but you can actually watch both Life and Living as well as the VHS tapes. For some reason they don't check if you've watched the other so you can double up on the EXP (for your first character in a world at least)

[@V_Drawin]

I also point out, with higher levels of first aid or if your a doctor it also tells you a bit more detail of your wounds. How severe they are and if there at a chance of infection.

[@somerandomgamer8504]

Now if only it mattered at all...

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Good thing to have in PvP environments especially!

[@JayHog1992]

@@somerandomgamer8504 Only matters if you turn off infection in general.

[@TotallyNotPC]

Ohhhh I thought it was one of my mods doing that! I run a lot of mods but since it was helpful I didn’t look much into it

[@thewearyexile9000]

@@somerandomgamer8504 Me and two homies play the game. We noticed one of our homies was really having a tough go of it. Like... he died 20 times and me and the other homie never died. We got rid of infection entirely. Basically going with lore that we are the lucky immune. But we amped up the zombies a bit. Made them stronger. More perceptive. More in general. Basically I'm playing as a doctor keeping the one homie alive. While it does suck that infection is gone you can still defiantly die.

[@dangerface300]

Tip for foraging. If you take the fisherman job, you have a +50% chance to find bait in applicable biomes. Some other jobs give bonuses to foraging chance, but not many of them and none so potent as the fisherman bait bonus.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

So many nice foraging bonuses for certain occupations!

[@JurorNumber24]

Starting skills are much more valuable than they seem on the character creation screen. The xp bonus for 1 point says +75%, but it's actually changing the xp multiplyer from .25 to 1. It's actually a 4x increase for that skill. Each starting point after that is +25%.

[@Masaru8]

Really?, If thats so is sick powerful for long term survival

[@kutairaisu4603]

I'm a super noob. Can you explain a bit better?

[@JurorNumber24]

@@kutairaisu4603 I'll try. Every character has an xp multiplier for each skill that gets calculated before fast/slow learner. By default this is .25. when you add a skill point in character creation it tells you the first point increases xp gain by 75%, and another 25% for each point after. This is a great miscommunication on the devs part. The first point ADDS .75 to that skills multiplier with .25 added for each additional point. The first point takes you from getting 1/4 of the xp per action to the full amount, that's 4 times the xp in that skill. Fast and slow learner actually do what they say and add/subtract a percentage at the end of that process.

[@HamidKarzai]

Wow this is incredibly useful to know, thanks

[@Jakkaribik1]

@@JurorNumber24 So Stacking XP gain should be Made with Fast learner because in the END fast/slow learner is aplied to the XP formula

[@brotherzero]

About Carpentry, keep in mind that that different objects give different amounts of XP when disassembling. The bigger the better, so try to find places with lots of large furniture, like bookshelves in bookstores or those booth seats in restaurants. Crates in warhouses work pretty well too, just throw all the contents on the ground, disassemble them, then use the planks and nails they produced to build walls, then disassemble the walls, repeat until you run out of materials

[@JayHog1992]

Best exp is often beds too, so a motel/hotel is bound to give insane exp for it.

[@whoknows8223]

Thx brotherzero. Very nice tip for a new player like me

[@noiz1762]

⁠@@JayHog1992 I heard that tip too, I think from atomicduck in a different video, it helped a ton the first time I played 😊 reached I think level 5 easily

[@slavboi8981]

in all my years.. well, 2 years of playing this game, i've never gotten all skills to level 10, not that you even need them all at level 10, but gaining this knowledge will help out a lot

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Glad I could help Slav :D

[@nerfherder4284]

I think about skill levels in this game like this. Lvl means it's new to you. Lvl 5 mean you are at a solid journeyman. Lvl 10 is a master and people rarely ever master more than one thing, if that.

[@awfulroffle]

This is so helpful! I didn't even know where to begin with metalworking. The generator tip with electricity was really helpful too. Cheers!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

My pleasure! Happy to help :) Plenty of other stuff on the channel for new players!

[@BorzoiSpotProductions]

For carpentry, I usually go to the mass genfac co warehouse at the top of muldraugh. Hit the school or book store beforehand, and you can usually hit level 5 or 6 from the whole building. Plus you have water, a bit of food there and a chair to sleep in, so you can easily just post up for a while to grind your carpentry level out. Plus you're getting all that warehouse loot too, which can be machetes, tools, glue, tape, metal and plenty of other stuff too. Edit: A good note on the first aid training, you can queue the removal while you're still doing the other foot. Makes it a lot faster since there's no delay on doing the next foot.

[@kanicshep]

The increase of propane use regarding metalworking could make for some interesting MP economy. Metalworkers trading their skill and expertise for supplies perhaps. Also, regarding the foraging XP, discarding the item will also yield XP :)

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Can't wait for the crafting overhaul and seeing how it affects trading between players.

[@djaccountisbfisbx3880]

Speaking of heightened propane use, they should definitely add those massive propane tanks at gas stations.

[@DarthBirdy3]

You also get XP for discarding when foraging. No need to pick up every single thing if you don't need it.

[@chriskett6590]

so i just pick it up and drop it back down or what do you mean by discarding?

[@DarthBirdy3]

@@chriskett6590 When you right click on the little foraging bubble you can select discard

[@chriskett6590]

@@DarthBirdy3 thank you for explaining!

[@Snoogen11]

A side note for cooking. Foraging and fishing is great for levelling cooking. When you catch teh animals, get a knife and "fillet" them. Then cook them, for massive batches of XP. Furthermore any excess food you can't eat in time, that goes rotten, use compost bins, for two reasons firstly, this will help farming. Second the compost bins will provide worms for use in fishing. It's kind of a "circle of life" thing. Fish>compost>farm>repeat.

[@aidenius7005]

Ive been playing single player for the first time the last 6 weeks. Have a fire station in Rose walled off and considering adopting a pet rock for company. Thanks for this guide.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Nice work! Rosewood Fire Station is a great base.

[@0minous187]

use foraging near cars there is a chance you can find keys i have found several so far

[@michaelpalm6925]

I have waited a long time for this good comprehensive guide, updated for the latest version of the game! Thumbs up!!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Glad it was helpful!

[@araknas3981]

For levelling Metalworking: If you plan on making the journey to Louisville, you can disassemble the metal fences at the checkpoint. I'd recommend disassembling only the fences inside the checkpoint so you can keep working and going through the place relatively safely. If you read all the books when hitting the new levels, you can get to around level 6 or 7 in this location alone.

[@JayHog1992]

Dissassembling broken cars should help too, right? Especially if you're destroying the ones blocking the road when getting from A to B. Once had to deal with 3 traffic jams between West point and Mauldraugh.

[@aysh74]

The full body long johns are also great for working that tailoring. Great Guide!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Thank you! Definitely true.

[@t395delta]

For first aid i full sprint along hedges tripping over, when you fall over you get scratched and you can scratch the same area repeatedly and bandage for xp every time also you only get scratches from this so all you need are ripped sheets and you're good to go, rather than needing tweezers needle etc for the window technique.

[@duetopersonalreasonsaaaaaa]

Giggling to myself imagining watching someone purposefully trip in the bushes over and over again

[@5geeseinabucket]

Currently I’m doing a long term survival game and one tip I have is that spear fishing is good because of its junk items, from what I know shoes are completely useless but socks can be ripped into 2 ripped sheets, if you forage for a tree branch and chipped stone you can make a knife or an axe which are both really useful, knives can be used to sharpen tree branches into spears for weapons or more fishing and the axe is great for chopping down trees to get fire wood for winter or cooking

[@christianwhite8877]

There's a small thing note about leveling your medical skill the slow healer trait indirectly gives you more experience from tending to your injuries (by making your injuries heal slower you will need to tend to your injuries more which will give you more experience) however the fast healer trait indirectly lowers the experience gain from tending to your injuries (by having your injuries heal faster you need to tend to your injuries less often which means it will lower the amount of experience you will end up with) the ironic thing about this though is even with max level medical skill the slow healer trait still makes it take a certain amount longer than it would have to heal but with max level medical skill and fast healer you will heal most injuries within a few days so long as you used a bandage on it (this basically means if you take fast healer you will gain levels in the medical skill slower but those levels are somewhat better at healing you than without fast healer)

[@tylermcdonald5164]

This blew my mind

[@mikehunt4265]

That's a catch 22 if ever I've read one Level up faster at the expense of the levels being less efficient or level up slower with levels being more efficient

[@flaviaredpanda]

im currently in a multiplayer game with 2 friends and we were having trouble with some skills, thank you for this

[@MrAtomicDuck]

My pleasure! Happy to help.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Something I missed? Find this video useful? Let me know in the comments below!

[@pato4063]

Missed the part of deez nutz in ur mouth. Ha GOTTEM

[@DakotALoopeR]

Foraging you can get the bonus XP even if you discard the item

[@TheMitu97]

On top of that, you can forage during the nightime better if you use flashlight, as it increases your search radius (you even did so in the video!). Plus some clothing pieces that covers the face like gas masks can reduce your foraging radius.

[@Galipheo]

For cooking, I found that filleting fish and skinning animals gives MASSIVE exp, especially if they weigh a lot/have more nutrition. Much much faster to level up than... actually cooking food.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Interesting!

[@exiledcaptain]

Discarding the item found while foraging still gives you the XP for it, better items (like berries and mushrooms) give way more xp than stuff like sticks and stones.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Always good to know!

[@chriskett6590]

discarding meaning dropping it back on the ground?

[@exiledcaptain]

@@chriskett6590 Discarding is the option below picking it up, it deletes the item you found and gives you the xp for it, good if you dont want to keep picking up sticks and stones or poisonous berries for xp

[@chriskett6590]

@@exiledcaptain thanks for the Info!

[@GatlingGoose]

I've found the quickest way to level up carpentry (alongside books) is to find and disassemble wooden fences. These can be found outside many houses, just make sure to clear the area first!

[@whoknows8223]

Genius. Thanks for the tip

[@HunkyDory92]

You should be able to train first aid skill on corpses. Also, I wish it wasnt first aid, and was instead medicine. I would like to be able to craft some cool medical things from level 6/7 onwards. Things like stimulents, more advanced medicines/drugs, body mods and prosthetics that allow for more customised playstyles on more difficult sandbox settings. Imagine a flamethrower arm. Could also add a new research system to make it more difficult to get your hands on these things.

[@bolinhasoneca]

Wouldn't that be on engineering instead of medicine tho

[@darain6822]

Re: Electrical leveling, you can and should craft Makeshift Ham Radios for the biggest possible electrical experience. I went from level 8 to 10 in 16 crafts alone, which was insanely fast and the materials which came from (a) dismantling TV/radios (for receiver/transmitter) and (b) dismantling stuff for leveling metalwork to obtain aluminum. Worth noting though I took electrician occupation to level up faster with the exp boost.

[@Qu4resma]

One extra info for ya'll: There's also an episode/tape of Exposure Survival that gives Carpentry XP, on day 8 at 6PM.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

True!

[@rob-rendell]

And amusingly, the devs got confused, because it finishes with the Woodcraft outro 😀

[@synthsol5522]

For mechanics and tailoring, it’s faster to use clothing scrap to repair car seats

[@Andy_Rew]

Such a small detail no one seem to notice was the amount of beer bottles and snacks piling up every time the TV shows up lol, love it.

[@OaklynMediaLLC]

2:09 Another tip! The wood axe is better than the red axe you find typically in the fire stations. It lasts longer for carpentry leveling

[@xyss411]

I tend to play long games with extremely rare loot spawns. With that being said, I tend to go against the grain and skip life and living in the first 9 days altogether so that I can be actually sure I'll have the XP bonuses when I do find the tapes. Even on ER loot, you find those tapes eventually, and it pays off big time. Especially once you already have a few levels in a given skill and then the additional bonuses. It makes the early game harder, but that's a lot of the fun for me. I tend to find a car as soon as I can and go driving around all over the map. So this works really well if you go for the nomad life.

[@carlchapman4053]

A foraging XP trick I use is just to keep Search Enabled during my daily routine, the chance of finding something is low but if you are walking around anyway then you are getting free XP every time you see something and the chance grows with every level you gain. (Also Free Stuff!)

[@langletprolet8378]

but it looks dark tho

[@doritomuncher_429]

@@langletprolet8378In game settings you can turn the effects of foraging off, I believe it’s under visuals. It can still be a bit dark, but still helps greatly :)

[@mitchdiamond1]

So a tip to level up your farming early on: there are plenty of Seed bearing plants in set spawn locations, mostly in back yards. You might benefit from planning out your trips there before you start the game, using the interactive map found online.

[@JayHog1992]

Bit of a tip, starting level 8 in cooking, you can see if food has been poisoned or not. Unsure if handy or not because either you messed up the recipe and added bleach by accident or if someone else is messing with you and trying to kill you. But in a PvE place, you WANT to work together because zombies are a pain already, and in PvP, everyone shoots first, loots later. So the whole poison thing comes as a bit of a redudancy.

[@thefallenone199]

Unless you have poison food In inv. As a from the grave revenge deterrent

[@jgrandson5651]

once i was really close to lose my weak stomach character because i ate burnt food. Maybe it would have not happened if i had lvl 8 in cooking.

[@zalagard]

Another way to raise metalwork is with the magazine to make metal sheets, once you reach lvl4 transform all the small sheets into large sheets and vice versa, if my memory serves me correctly it gives you the same experience as dismantling a vehicle but it's faster and does not consume all the propane from the torch

[@turdfurgusson6373]

Thanks for your guides. Always learn something new. Thumbs up 👍

[@MrAtomicDuck]

My pleasure!

[@emilianozamora399]

What this video neglects to mention, picking a skill at the start gives you a 4 times XP boost. The default XP gain is 25%. One point at the start adds 75% to it, to make 100% XP gain, what's meant to be the default XP gain.

[@Borkomora]

pretty much every run now i exclusively roll as many variable traits as possible to give me that +75% in as many skills as possible. It really does feel like that should be the default leveling speed for all things.

[@WilliamTheMovieFan]

There are some other video tapes that can help increase your skills. Granny Nanni is a video that can help with tailoring, as is the video Tailoring 101, and there is a sock cars video that can help with mechanics a little. There are other videos that can help with a few of your other skills too. I've not done much trapping, but stick traps are easier to make and can be placed many places that the other traps won't work, like in town. I think birds are more numerous and easier to catch, plus you are likely to have worms. You can get worms quickly and easily too. Takes a while to grow cabbages and carrots! Has anyone done a lot of trapping? I'd love to hear about your experiences.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Soooo many tapes to find! I love that there's a lot of them to discover now. Absolutely, if you're based in town I suppose stick traps would make sense, but if you got good bait, definitely catch some rabbits as the exp gains are specifically related to how big your catch is. Rabbits will always be bigger than birds!

[@nerfherder4284]

100% agree about stick traps. Worms work great and you can put them on the roof of a warehouse and catch stuff without having to leave

[@dntnawall]

my last playthrough i was based in the riverside school. i had bird traps on the roof and box traps in the woods to the south that i mainly baited with peanut butter and cereal to catch squirrels (didn't have anything to bait rabbits). after a while i had 2 freezers completely full of meat. i've actually never tried fishing in this game but that might be my next goal

[@Dimon811]

The only difficulty with the Home VHS tapes that you've mentioned is that they are unique items on a map and will only spawn once in a given game. So while they are very useful to find, they are also very hard to find. They spawn in residences (homes/apartments) and I believe possible to spawn in cars, though very rarely.

[@ilikespagett1514]

I've not seen anyone mention this before, but dismantling those long store shelves gives a RIDICULOUS amount of xp. To the point where I think it may be bugged. Btw the shelves I'm talking about are like, the ones you find in West Point mechanics. The long ones where most of the store things are (there's more in a store opposite the gas station with a living quarters upstairs)

[@Conkussions]

Very nice video Mr. Duck, I learned a ton. Love the consistency 👌

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Thank you!

[@sethlogue6170]

Something about foraging. It seems that fatigue effects the search radius. To maximize your radius foaring for food or mats in morning right after you wake you. As you stay awake the search radius goes down to a minimum of 3. At least that's my experience with it

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Could be true, but I'm always cautious until I see the code to back it up, so much misinformation in the PZ community so gotta be careful not to spread it :D

[@Omni0404]

To add to this, I found on the wiki that the hungrier your character is the better your chances are at foraging food by up to like 50%. That's cool! I know our sense of smell improves when we're hungry but maybe we're better at spotting edible plants too lol edit: I also didn't hear him mention different items give different XP. Scavenging stones for a few experience points versus an insect which gives me a couple hundred (with books)

[@commengaetor7258]

If you have a farm set up you can easily max your cooking on just your first crop by making multiple stir-fries with one ingredient and cooking them. This probably is a bit slower than cramming your stir-fry full but it's a lot more resource efficient since you get the same exp from cooking regardless of how many ingredients is in the food. You will need a lot of frying pans though.

[@tytech7615]

Carpentry show on Life and Living comes on at noon only the first seven days. On the eighth day it airs at 6pm (18:00 military time) thought it's not worth many XP ticks.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Wonder why they change it on the last day 🤔

[@neskey]

here's a tip. you can level up cooking reasonably quicky by fishing for extended periods. filleting the fish and cooking them all at once. i got to level 4 in a few days living in the abandoned buildings next to the lake south of muldraugh. no XP boost or books read!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Thanks for the info!

[@RadicalEdward_115]

Damn alot of info packed into this video, nice man

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Thanks Edward! Took a lot of work but glad I wrapped it up!

[@RadicalEdward_115]

@@MrAtomicDuck i was impressed

[@kadejewell]

Literally grabbed paper and took notes. Thanks duck!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

My pleasure.

[@Gneeznow]

That house you were doing carpentry in, I've been living in that house most of my games for about a decade now, since build 27

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Awesome!

[@jmnero4447]

For those doing tailoring. I've noticed the higher the level the more often you get thread from ripping clothes. So I recommend using the thread you get at lower levels asap so you get that xp faster. Then the thread will start to roll in quicker. Don't forget to right click the thread to consolidate it down! Otherwise it is inventory space wasted.

[@ShotByWoodz]

Very descriptive video! Thanks! 👍

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Glad it was helpful!

[@KrillixKai]

Seriously needed this video for certain skills I've never used even as a veteran.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Glad I could provide!

[@TheMitu97]

There is Z.Squad episode 3 VHS that gives you one experience tick on Mechanics and Metalworking, not much but still something. Other than that, some Home VHS tapes can also help level up the skills, but they are super rare and can spawn only once per world.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Okay, I gotta look into this one!

[@nerfherder4284]

One of the few instances that the wiki is up to date for this game 😂

[@ShiroIsMyName]

​@@nerfherder4284 help us and join us in updating the wiki :)

[@neidmaremodding]

Bonus tips for Fishing: - Between 04:00-06:00 and 18:00-20:00 you get a slight bonus to fishing - Fishing Tackle has a lower base catch chance, but scales better with fishing level. Live bait has a higher base chance, but scales worse. The formula is 10 + fishing_lvl *2.5 for tackle and 20 + fishing_lvl * 1.5 for live bait. Generally if you have live bait on hand, use that. Unless you have fishing 10, then it does not matter.

[@daquinoricardo]

Congratulations, very nice video!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Thank you very much!

[@i1C4RU5]

Potential first aid fix: At higher levels, say 8 or above, disinfecting or bleaching any wound from zombies, including bites, within a minute of receiving the wound will prevent you from contracting the virus in exchange for maintaining the sickness buildup and eventual fever which the virus normally provides, having to fight the onset condition of illness as if they had caught a cold. Something like this could turn the worst skill into one of the best. I don't think it would ruin the mortal danger of the game, as there is still a sense of urgency in disinfecting the wound and getting yourself in a position where a nasty cold won't mean your doom. There would also be an incentive to picking the doctor and nurse professions, as they would much sooner be able to reach the life-saving ranks of first aid when compared to other professions.

[@Austin-iw9hj]

I'm watching this video on repeat at work and it's just as entertaining each time

[@InGlownIgnited]

For First aid, you can keep it unsutured and just bandage them to gain health and once you've recovered, you can rinse repeat. Easiest way to powerfarm to level 10

[@MrAtomicDuck]

If it's a deep wound it won't seal up without a suture though? Feel like it'd be worth getting the extra exp from suturing the wound and save yourself the pain of bleeding between replacing bandages.

[@stevenscott2136]

@@MrAtomicDuck I fully recovered from a "Terminal Damage" neck-bite the other day, with nothing but a bourbon application and LOTS of bandage-swapping, so I guess you can heal from anything. I'm very new to PZ, so if there's a worse wound than that, I haven't seen it yet.

[@langletprolet8378]

@@stevenscott2136 you'll still turn to zombie eventually after that neck bite no?

[@Comp1337Loser]

Slow down buddy first I need to stop dying every 12 minutes

[@aceroswell7451]

SAMEEEEE

[@A-small-amount-of-peas]

I actually miss those days, wait until you get to the "now what" stage and then get bit doing something stupid because you're a little bored

[@Comp1337Loser]

@ this literally happened last night, I got a character to two months and decided to go to the remote military base west of Rosewood to get better backpacks. There were so many baby trees growing in the road I got my truck stuck and screwed around trying to free it for so long I got surrounded and eaten 😅

[@gozzilla177]

I didn't die! Now I'm lost cuz I wasn't prepared for this lol I look forward to dying while watching this video 😂

[@typicalfish3522]

going to a school in singleplayer is also amazing for metal working just take everything out of the lockers and dump them on the floor and then disassemble all the lockers

[@AlexiSpaghetti]

Another good thing about leveling mechanics is that when stripping out all of the parts out of a car, all removed parts go straight to your inventory, ignoring your weight restrictions. You can easily exceed your weight cap by 150 or 200 through this, as long as you dont mind taking a bit of damage for being overburdened. If you have the Workshop mod, much of the car parts you remove can be broken down into scrap for extra XP. Makes for easy leveling, just keep the parts which weren't damaged too much from your efforts and break down the rest.

[@drlibro2669]

What i consider the BEST way to get levels of cooking in the early game, aside from shows, is to cook all the boxes of eggs you find. They cook super fast and each egg gives individual xp. And great if you picked underwheight, as 6+ eggs get you to weight increase.

[@DezZzO_YT]

You can loot foraging items by just left-clicking on the item icon. No need to open context menu and click pickup. Saves a click every time.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Oh I know, just pure habit, been right clicking for so long it's hard to stop!

[@DezZzO_YT]

@@MrAtomicDuck yeah I get that, great vid!

[@FayeShark]

I didn't know that there was a vhs tape for mechanics, until now. Thanks for the vid

[@Lyn-uh2mb]

while this video is very helpfull i will be honest with you guys about how to lvl fast most skills... lets say you just fresh spawned... 1) find all skill tapes and bring them with you along with books for each skill.. (you dont need to ever touch a hammer or food product in order to be a lvl 10 carpentry or lvl 10 cook tapes provide exp at random moments during the tape playing on a TV so if you have books available its best to press to stop watching if you just received a lvl and the tape has more to play... read the next book and watch the tape again to get the full exp 2) maintenance skill is increased by hitting trees with everything that can possibly be equiped as a weapon... even a pen that is useless during a battle will offer you maintenance points if you start using it to poke a tree with it until it breaks not sure if it also increases the actual weapon skill as well but its possibly not worth spending any valuable item for poking trees (it can also be increased by hitting zombies or literally everything that is considered a target but trees is the safest way and you get some logs as well if you manage to chop down a tree with a pen or a spoon or whatever else you might have) 3) doing skill related activitys for the skill like any other player.. tapes will help you lvl up almost every skill but some tapes only provide a 1 or 2 lvls for the related skill meaning the rest is up to you (if you die you can just go back to base read all the books again and start watching all the tapes again so tapes are super overpower since even if you die it will only take you a less than a hour with vanilla settings to go from lvl 1 to lvl 10 on a skill as long as you have the tapes and the books for it (and yes tapes with fast learner skill do combine very well)

[@minhthuan7965]

For electrical skill, you could actually craft a makeshift radio to gain much more exp than repair generator or dismantling. However you will need to read a magazine first.

[@domspeziale8503]

I find with carpentry, along with beds and large dressers, you can disassemble white picket fences to level up your carpentry skill. Paired with the appropriate skill book, your golden…

[@Thatonecyborg]

Noise makers can be used to draw zombies away from a area be sure to place it where you want them to be

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Yeah they're a great tool for this!

[@jarnMod]

8:30 I feels the pain just listen to that Great tips

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Hahahaha

[@YetAnotherLARPPodcast]

330hours in and I'm only just realising you can use rotten food at high cooking levels. Great video thankyou sir!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

No problem! Thanks for watching!

[@danielriveradeltoro4262]

The exact video I was looking for.

[@katejones8705]

So helpful, thank you!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

No probs :)

[@EdmundKempersDartboard]

I guess disassembling every staircase I see isn't as funny to the rest of the server as it is to me.

[@fabiopauli420]

I think a great change to First Aid would be the ability to perform autopsys or fake medicine on dead zombies. Like training to wrap a bandage around the wounds we inflicted on the dead body so you are prepared for the real case scenario when you are unfornatly injured for real due to a mistake

[@alejandramonaghan4854]

Reminds me of when Carol practiced on a zombie in case Lori needed a c section in the walking dead.

[@sicroto]

Love mods that add things to level up. for example wooden dowels mods give same XP as spears and are honestly more useful. more builds and more builds appliances are good for electrical and metalwork and connect radio to grid give xp every time you do.

[@alimardani4994]

you can hold shift and use your mousewheel to skip between zombie loot. you dont need to click every single zombie :)

[@AZ.Cowboy]

In tailoring, patching with denim gives more xp than ripped sheets and leather gives more xp than denim.

[@UnkemptGamer]

What a great video, thank you!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Glad it was helpful!

[@nerfherder4284]

My tips: If you are in Muldraugh for the sake of Farming there are 2 farm plots that begin the game with crops you can harvest for lots of XP. For electric skills the best bet is to disassemble phonebooths, security consoles and computers. You can get XP from the TV shows live and on VHS both so no need to choose. As for Cooking get a bowl and turn everything into a salad or cook all of those insects they really add up. Also, most people don't realize that the books make the higher level gains almost as easy as lvl 1 and 2 because of the multiplyer making them even more important later.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

The multipliers scaling is so beneficial!

[@ithinkitsaurus]

This is exactly what i needed. thanks

[@sebbediah]

It's grindy af but it awakens something primal inside me 😤

[@MrAtomicDuck]

And that's the way we love our Zomboid.

[@SnowbirdTheGoober]

Quick note about leveling foraging- discarding finds will grant the same XP bonus as collecting them, so don't feel compelled to grab everything you find if you just plan on dropping it afterwards

[@0michelleki020]

Stick traps are the most reliable trap imho, i normally use 4. i place bait in the morning, go scavenging and when i come home 5-10 hours later and there's a bird in all of them. I could never really get the box trap to work even if it was half an hours walk away from the base.

[@lazerpie101]

with a low mechanics level, remove a tire and just spam remove break. There's a low chance of removal so you can just speed up time while you attempt to remove it.

[@lorenzodias2750]

i'm a simple man, i see a zomboid video from atomicduck, i like it

[@MrAtomicDuck]

My man.

[@johngrund2567]

I truly like your videos & wanted to add a critical comment on fishing. You highly recommend using the lure early, however . . . without personal knowledge. . . I have heard it is best to wait until level 4 before using lures as there is a chance that diminishes of losing the lire on a snapped line.

[@Oroberus]

A great way to incorporate levelling your carpentry in your gameplay are warehouses youre planning to loot: 1. Grab a camping bed, a bit of food and maybe a few magazines 2. Grab a car (bigger trunk, better trunk) 3. Go to the Warehouse and clear it out 4. Put down your bed 5. Park your car inside the Warehoouse (and turn it off, important) 6. Loot as many crates empty as possible and store the loot in your car 7. Dismantle all the crates you looted 8. Build new crates out of the materials you get out of them close to your care 9. Relocate the loot from your car to your own crates 10. Repeat 6 to 8 This way you're getting carp XP for dismantleing, get carp XP for building, constantly gain more materials to keep going and you relocate all the possible loot close to an entry point for later pickup (as you most likely won't have enough space to take everything with you right now) With only 2 or 3 days in one of the mid sized warehoiuses will grant you several levels of carp while you also get to know which loot is there and make it more easily available/accessible for later pick up :)

[@xeenon___]

Thank you sm for your videos! Also, are you Arekkz gaming? Lol, you both sound the same!

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Nope! You're welcome.

[@phoenixj1985]

For levelling mechanics, it's more efficient to level by towing several vehicles into a safe area. Spend some time each day replacing parts, until desired level is reached, such as lvl 2 for hotwiring. Relevant Vhs tapes also help provide a boost.

[@jensenadams8072]

How do you tow

[@phoenixj1985]

@@jensenadams8072 reverse the back of a car to the front or rear of another vehicle. Go to the back of the tow vehicle and press 'v'. If you are close enough, a '+' will appear. Press to attach car b to car a. The towed car must be attached to the towing car otherwise it won't move when you try. Best vehicles for towing are high power such as emergency vehicles and sports cars. Cars such as the dart can be towed by most other vehicles.

[@tlangworthy21]

Maybe a bit too detailed for this video but there are some houses in the world where you can farm some pre-planted crops and make big gains in farming as well.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

That's very true! Would have been good for me to mention this!

[@KingFluffs]

I usually spend the first 4-5 days ingame speed reading all the skil lbooks I can find and watching Life and Living.

[@MrAtomicDuck]

Definitely a good way to go!

[@nerfherder4284]

A few good mods for that: Big Bruno's (metalworking show on at 8pm), Crazy Carl's (mechanic show on at 5pm or is it 4?) and amateur electrician.

[@alidaaaaa7160]

The best way i found to level carpentry is to go to a school, I recommend the Riverside school, and read the skill books and disassemble the cafeteria tables, for some reason they give you a LOT of exp especially when reading the books and you can get to level 10 in just a few days. (granted I was a carpenter and started with some levels already in carpentry.

[@terrenceinthehand3122]

New to PZ. And this has been invaluable to me. 😮

[@nazaG_89]

my last character won the game, the rent of the 1month server expired and he was alive after 2 & half years still I love to watch these videos!.