Should You Live in the Forest in Project Zomboid

In this video I talk about the pros and cons of living in the forest in Project Zomboid.

[legrognard]

tried living in the forest in real life once. SUPER easy guys. literally didn't run in to a single zombie, loads of good houses nearby to loot. there was even a 7-11 about a half a mile away - absolute killer location guys you should totally try it

[FreeWay]

I've tried this, and it went well, until I ate poison berries and died

[darkninjacorporation]

Living in the forest is incredibly relaxing. The game goes from zombie survival to a relaxing camping simulator if you have the right build

[owenbar]

You actually don't need an axe or hammer, you can forage/make your own. Things you need from the city (if you don't want to spend days trying to forage them): nails, saw, maybe trash bags
Feeding yourself with foraging is broken when you hit level 4 (can be done in under a week with no books), even in winter.
As far as "zombies in the woods": check the zombie heat map, and check story events. Zombies in the heat map will respawn infinitely, and zombies in the story event only spawn in once. Therefore, living in the wilderness is exceptionally safe. The problem: boring. Half the fun in the game is interacting with zombies

[thversagnamorethingi]

For a wilderness playthrough I like to use the relay station near Muldraugh, tall chain link fences, in the woods but not so far from town that a car is a necessity, & the roleplay value of camping in a relay station is a nice bonus

[TheAce]

I have a good run currently living in the forests with a park ranger build, it definitely makes living in the forest easier when you can tell if your foods poisonous. I also have a flatbed truck and Humvee that act as a portable base where I set up next to lakes with a tent, tables, radios, traps, backpacks, and the flat bed as a main source of storage and use the hummer for going into town. It’s been a really fun way to play just for being able to find different lakes and rivers to set up a new camp and drive into fresh towns after looting a whole other area of the map

[nekosalad]

right now im playing on apocalypse and i decided to never sleep indoors unless i built that house. so far i have survived easily.
my tips:
take outdoorsman trait. you dont want to be outside in rain because you catch cold. and thats a disaster.
take hiker trait.
take claustrophobic trait.
get yourself a kettle or cooking pot in your spawn house.
settle near lake or river or well.
dont eat insects that you forage unless you are starving. save them for baits. you can trap birds easily with them. small birds give you the same amount of hunger points but with less depression also you level up trapping.
make yourself a million spears both for fishing and damage.
DONT EAT MUSHROOMS OR BERRIES until you have found herbalist book(dont recommend taking the trait) . dont gamble with your life. unless you are starving.
download some good mods like crossbow mod and recycling mod to make survival cooler.
if you find yourself getting bored irl try to survive till winter. once the seasons changes you get new challenges.

[Syx_Hundred]

You don't need to loot axes, you can take a nature occupation like park ranger for a foraging/XP bonus and forage tree branches and chipped stones. Pretty much unlimited axes.

[knightshousegames]

I'm in the middle of a run doing this, and honestly, it's a really interesting way to play the game, and teaches you what really matters

The main thing you can't recreate in the wild is a saw, so finding one of those fast is huge. Another big get early is actually grabbing one of those beach chairs you find sitting around outside, they're much more common than something better like one of those army cots or a tent, but they are way heavy (honestly, stupidly so, considering the army cot thing weighs like a third as much, and is bigger), but at the very least it's a way to get a place to sleep quickly. And while a tent is nice for keeping you dry in the rain and such, for the early game getting soaked doesn't really matter, since it never really gets all that cold. In my run a tarp has basically been impossible to find anyway.

You can technically make axes, but they don't last. Of the manufactured axes, the one you really want is the Wood Axe, it sucks as a weapon, but it fells trees quick, and between that and the saw you can make planks. Add in a screw driver and you can make a notched plank, which can be used to make fire by friction with sturdy sticks. The saw and axe in particular are the two biggest tools for living in the wilderness. The others are cooking pots, a couple of them preferably. Keep those at the bonfire and you can disinfect your water, cook food, and sterilize your bandages.

Another nice grab: Trash Bags. They're super light and can hold 20 kg, you can use them to organize your stuff as containers at camp, just toss em on the ground. Also grab a pen or pencil, being able to mark off where stuff is on the map becomes so much more vital, especially places like places where you are setting up camp.

In addition to the obvious advantage of having an unlimited water source, setting up camp near a creek or pond has the added benefit of knowing you literally can't be attacked from the direction the water is. So if you can surround yourself on 3 sides with a concave body of water, you greatly limit the possible directions you can get attacked from. Find a good, isolated creek, setup a fire pit and your bed of choice, and you should very rarely be bothered.

Playing this style teaches you about so many mechanics most players never really have to interact with, like Foraging, Farming, Tailoring (you're gonna be fixing your clothes a lot from all the trees), as well as preserving food in jars. You can also really learn cool parts of the map this way. One thing I like to do is just explore on foot to find all the weird little places on the map, stuff you would never find if you only ever travel between towns by car, like I stumbled upon this cool hunting lodge in the woods near West Point, or exploring the golf course near Riverside. Even just weird little buildings in the middle of nowhere, it's wild the amount of detail there is on this map.

If you can survive well living this style, then base living feels easy peasy.

[OldieWan]

I've played this game for years now. There are still times when I am playing and a zombie comes out of no where and makes me jump out of my seat! One of the main reasons I love this game. The jump scares are very real in this game!

[plagueRat]

One time I survived for one month in rosewood, then took a car out to the cabin west of Muldraugh. When I made it there, I had no idea about what I had to do to survive on my own.
I had to teach myself how to farm, trap, and I even made a path that went out through the woods and towards the left of the cabin, out into a large clearing where some radio towers were and zombies didn’t spawn so I could bring cars in and out.
I survived on my own in the cabin for 4 months. One day I decided to take my car out to a nearby neighborhood, so I headed out, started to shoot some zombies, got swarmed and died.
Lesson on not using guns.

[eskimosonthemoon]

The best place in my opinion is the isolated cabin west of Westpoint, it is a little cabin, right next to a lake, right next to a river and also has 3 massive villas also isolated from society across the lake. I occasionally go to loot them but you can live in them as well. Anyway good location, would recommend

[Brigand]

My very first game (many years ago) I lived in the forest, not knowing much about the game. I figured out how to build a platform that was accessible only by rope so the zombies never bothered me at home. Eventually I got around to making log walls to fence in my yard beside a river and lived as a hermit for a few seasons before the game got boring and I quit for a long time before playing again.

[DarkCT]

I favor wilderness or near-wilderness playthroughs when my characters have the mobility for it. The thing that stinks to me about living that far out is those times where you have little choice but flee in a random direction, and find yourself in the wilderness with limited resources. Water in particular has been a real problem on a playthrough or two when this was forced, so a spot by a body of water is amazing on this one. playing vanilla does make a pure start in the wilderness far more painful, but a dip into the right spots near your starting point may yield great results for the key things you'll need.

[RiotRabit]

The absolute bare minimum needed from towns: a saw and a cooking pot. Everything else can be collected or made as you travel the wilderness.

Piece of advice: stay nomadic and hit up farmsteads as you go. Most players will get very bored otherwise. Deep woods living is very peaceful.

[Killerwale-hkwy]

Between West point and Louisville there's a sort of boot camp (it's for some reason not marked on the map project), it's main building is very pretty but it's a little big for a base (also, there's really few zombies there). There's a lake for fishing, overall It's an amazing spot for a multiplayer base in the woods. Very isolated so people won't just "pass by". And far enough from everything that you're safe, but still close to both West Point, the Mall and the area before Louisville. The problem with it is that it's quite a hastle to get to the road and back, and once you make it there it gets overwhelming very quickly. West of Riverside there's a similar area only way bigger. It's calmer, has way more houses (which are spread out around a huge lake for fishing), I think the big houses don't look as pretty as the one between Louisville and West point but it's biggest problem is that it's one of the most desolate places on the map. We always play multiplayer, so that desolation sucks. I've used both locations with a group. The first one as a team of raiders, it's great because a ton of traffic passes. And the 2nd one as a hidden tribe which was focussed on building their own stuff and being self sustainable.

Both bases are still not as cool as living in central Louisville with 18 people. Every day you wake up to 5 guys fighting zombies in the living room.

[TNAROHfan]

Yes you should, especially if you play with mods like here they come, expanded helicopter events, random noise events and have high population settings and a lot of sprinters, like I almost always do. Any of those scenarios, particularly at night, can lead to a legit certain death event in the middle of higher population centers, when you actually start defending your fortified base and attract every other zombie in the immediate area to come join the party. Unless you cheese of course and knock out the stairs with a sledge and be stuck for days on your upper floors, which I hate both aspects of. I like to fight zombies not be surrounded by undefeatable hordes that cause the risk of possible major performance issues.

Right on the edge of the wilderness/forest in the middle of a scope friendly clearing, is my favorite, close enough for car runs or the occasional long day trip on foot to restock if necessary to get through winter.

[snakebot]

A thing that completely negates the issue with zombies is to put composters around your base or entrances(if the walls of the base are indestructible, like metal fences) and if you put a fence on opposite sides of the composter you can sprint through it. This breaks the zombie pathfinding completely and end up standing there, and if you have a long enough weapon or us a gun you can kill them with absolutely no risk to you.

[Luperoi]

The park in the middle of lv with 10yeard mod is a forest - there is a bar with a circular road and a bridge - Best fckng place i ever built a base

Use the small pace as shelter while building the essentials outside - city is all around you, but there is brraks and fences and edges and a river pathfinding go crazy

[chrishubbard]

Living in the woods is simple and probably gets boring fast. Foraging for food and building supplies, fishing for more food, eventually building a small compound for yourself because what else are you going to do with your day once you have your meals covered? And thats about it. Unlike city living where you need to constantly go house clearing for supplies, fight swarms of undead, and skill up in numerous areas to survive, I think forest living is forage, fishing, and carpentry and thats about it. Find a spot by a river or lake in the woods, start clearing the surrounding areas with your stone axe for visibility, maybe scavenge a chair from a cabin if you find one so you dont have to sleep on the ground. Its an interesting way to play the game at least once, but id imagine once you get the pattern down it gets dull quick.