A deaf player takes it. He posted about it.

I knew a friend that took this because sounds made his craptop crash lol.

When I played the game before the multiplayer release, it was on Parsec but the audio was awful and it didnt sound that much to be useful enough, so I picked the deaf treat and it was worth it as I was playing while in company, it wasn't that bad in that specific context.

People who take deaf are the same ones who go on a 5 hour road trip with the car radio off. /s

i used to take deaf as "free points" My runs were very flaky back then where sometimes i would make a few months in, while other times i would sleep in a house with the alarm going without knowing it

Deaf also works if you're just a type of guy to chill in the safe heaven of your base, manage crops, buildings stuff etc.

My group plays with night sprinters. With keen hearing you can react to a sprinter in time to at least push it away, but with deaf, you cannot spin your character around fast enough by the time you see them behind you. It's always funny when someone asks who set off a house alarm and no one else responds, so I know it was me.

I was playing with friends as a deaf 9 strength 9 fitness veteran, and I made her as a gag character day one. Little would I know she would live for months and be the sole survivor of many groups. We eventually just started dropping me off at different hotspots of zombies and have me go blasting and swinging to the point I think I got up 10,000 melee and gun kills combined

@@amauruss That's actually really scary, I never considered house alarms. Imagine playing by yourself with Deaf and you accidentally set off a house alarm. You would be fucked because you wouldn't even know that it's going off.

@@HiddenButcher Perfect with schizophrenia when you sometimes hear the alarm going off but you can't know for sure if it isn't just a hallucination.

[Breaks into a house, watches woodcraft, grabs a snack, looks out the window] [400 Zomies dead sprinting to you]

The best part is when the zombies follow you, but they have no falling animation so they instantly bite you while you recover from yours.

Reminds me of one time I opened the upstairs bathroom door only for I shit you not, 30-40 zombies come rushing out, I jumped over the railing and luckily didn't break my legs

Stairs are the worst.

@@rightmerk4192 Like Francis from Left 4 Dead: "I hate stairs!"

@@juncheok8579 Ah yes, the classic bathroom party

Exactly. Helicopter event whilst being deaf == ultimate confusion. Why am I so unlucky, that hordes keep coming and coming…

As a player who almost exclusively plays WITH deaf, part of my procedure entering a house is looking out and checking if hordes were alerted. +12 trait points and a more quiet, peaceful game 🫡

I remember a friend took iron gut, said he was built different, ate a whole rotten ham and died shortly after

I take deaf because I play on a steam deck and have to keep volume 0

@@gloodgy2774that’s botulism for you

Having a dedicated freakout room. That's pretty smart.

@@hermeticinstrumentalist6804 A literal panic room

@@Zorro9129 Yeah XD. My base actually has a 1x1 outhouse,aswell as a 2x2 storage room with 3 crates in it,so I actually have 2 panic rooms at my base ironically enough XD

Lowkey sounds overpowered. I barely use guns anyway (in vanilla) because I don't make it long enough to stockpile ammo so the panic trait will not affect me. I hate reading a skill book and then my character gets bored... makes no fucking sense. How can you even get bored in a zombie apocalypse?

@@friendofp.24 Ever had no internet and forced yourself to read a guidebook about a topic you have no interest in? Though, if you are interested in it you wouldn't get bored.

I like the mod that adds cigars in game because I don't smoke cigarettes in real life. Wish I could get a pipe too.

​@@CyranofromBergerac get the more smokes mod adds more pipes and things to smoke from

@@spotless5819 Dang it, I got that one and six other mods. Par course when looking at new mods... Thanks though!

is it possible to quit smoking in pz

@@velevetyyflies Its not possible in vanila as far as I know.

It was on screen, but I didn't mention it because cooking can reduce unhappiness by enough I've never had to rely on anything else. Just a bowl and foraging makes for tons of happiness meals.

And if you smoke too much without the trait it actually makes you sick

⁠@@hunterlovejoy7651I think you do get sick when smoking as a smoker actually. It’s just that a smoker has two smoke less cigs overall two reduce the same amount of stress

My deaf friend lasted 4 months before falling through a glitched roof.

If you shove the door, that will also alert you to any zombie inside.

Packs laden with loot are often low on supplies!

​@@shitpostingmoron SOMETIMES :V

Surprisingly, I play like that already, without deaf. Maybe I should try a deaf run, I play way too passively, I always look around and such, lol.

That’s not a benefit, you have no reason to smoke if you aren’t a smoker

People who are infected or people who have the fear of blood trait also gain anxiety, when combined with the smoker trait one cigarette will remove all stress and -10 unhappiness, this can also help with boredom gained by staying inside and eating bad

Did they fix night owl? Last I remember it didn't do anything.

Iirc night owl was broken or it made you more sensitive to noise and disturbances.

@@hv4244 No thats what the description says but its 100% inaccurate,

@@spacehitler4537 i PERSONALLY notice hte difference but if you'd like you can do some testing. I'm just pointing out a really odd combo

I used to run that combo back in b40, didnt know the restless sleeper description was misleading, or that nightowl was supposed to be non-functional/ only useful with alarms.

Rip trash, he never stood a chance against the modded lethal colds.

He has survived an all negative vanilla run, but those modded negs were deadly 😂

Ambiguous amphibian did it first, I find aa a lot more entertaining than private lime, so if you enjoyed his series search ambiguous amphibians all negative traits

@@the_birb_guy2091 his all negative traits CD DA series is the reason i started playing the game.

​@@the_birb_guy2091 RIP Gerard Williams

Wtf literally me except it was just with one other friend and HE was the one who took asthmatic... Yes I did die more than he did LMAO

But you're still alive

The lesson I'm getting here is to take asthmatic if I don't want to die :P

It seems confidence causes carelessness so perhaps a negative trait that forces constant worry is helpful!

The joke used to go You don't need to be the fastest, just not the slowest. The opposite I guess applies in this game cause everybody wants to get into the action..

stealth was a lot more viable in earlier builds when you could one shot everything with a kitchen knife, it's kinda pointless now

It's quite the opposite: anti-stealth traits are a must pick for very experienced players. You basically always run Conspicuous and Clumsy, because not only you don't care about stealth, but you also want to aggro zombies faster and better

@@DezZzO_YT +20% of failing a vault want to say hello

@@TheIziPizi hurts newer players, doesn't affect experienced players, you simply stop running before a fence and take a slower lounge which negates the 20% chance, me and my friends consistantly do that even with sprinters without any issues and we're far from being gods in PZ, haven't tripped even once in my past 400~+ hours

Anti-stealth traits are free points and should always be taken. Stealth doesn't help make your area safer and making your area safe is the only way to survive consistently. Stealth only helps move through an area with less (read: not none) zombies on your back.

oh wow the hunger bonus is interesting kinda funny too

I had no idea about that bonus.. I've been thinking of taking that trait because I play.. Sort of a road warrior who moves and fights often and thus burns calories fast

Being hungry makes your foraging instincts flare up. I'm known for literally sniffing out decent spots in unknown terrain. I don't notice the right smells if I'm stuffed, but when peckish, going on slightly hungry? yeah. ain't no shrooms hiding from this nose.

I mean u could also just wait till u get the hungry moodle with small eater and do it that way but whatever I guess lol

@@Ugh718 Correct me if I'm wrong. Small eater costs points. Big eater gives points. Having points is generally better than paying them into something.

it definitely enhances the horror/survival stuff to not have an idea of the enemy being near. It's a good way to learn to check surroundings too.

And then you trigger a house alarm

Did you cook and eat the bowl?

So it depends on calories if you gain weight? I thought it depends on fat

It's the special ranch dressing you add 🥵

is debuff of underweight removing when you get enough weight? i guess the answer is yes and the only permanent debuff you gain is -1 fitness, am I right?

​@@eaglemount9287yessir the weight can be regained for the negatives eliminated, and the fitness can be recovered with exercise

I dont PvP and have a mirror to that experience. I'm playing with a friend on private so its just us two and I pull aggro a lot just by being conspicuous and having clumsy. Lets me pretend to be the tank

I reckon it could prove useful even in Update 42 when animals are introduced, but Update 43? (...When it EVENTUALLY arrives, that is!) *Stealth may very well have a new meaning in Project Zomboid.*

@@MasterLPG stealth against npcs? Idk but i think you got a point. Bullet proof vest might finally be good too

in what pvp situation you and your opponent are both shooting at the same zombie horde from equal distance such that the only factor at play in deciding who aggros the zombies is conspicuos? Literally never happened and never will

Oddly I feel there's no where near enough cigarettes around for the time its set in.

@@Retanaru like with guns and ammo, they took them away while trying to run away and the ones left were smoked fast

Awful trait, I never take it. Will never bother to search for a specific item whose only purpose is to counter a neg trait I chose to take because I'm stupid. If it was dynamic and you could get rid of it then maybe I'd consider it. But a permanent moodle literally all the time? Fuck that shit.

@@el10leo it's really easy to manage negative effect, wdym? I remember scouting for some cigs and had like 100 of them. That can be either 50 or even 100 days of being satisfied for having nicotine in your body, if you don't plan to fight zombies - don't smoke, that negative effect doesn't need to be satisfied right away.

@@el10leo think of it as simply adding another mechanic to the game. I don't think you will have any real use to cigs if you don't have a smoker. Chain smoking 2 cigs without having smoker trait will get you Queasy and you'll probably just read a newspaper whenever that rare night terror happens. Stress rarely happens in the game unless you're a Smoker or you have Fear of Blood and rocking Fear of Blood without Smoker is kinda insane...

You can use Shift+W and Shift+S to increase and decrease the cruise control, then you can set your own speed limit.

@@mcklucker17 yeah, but it resets when you do anything so its nod that convenient

Yeah calling Sunday Driver a "noob trap" is silly on his part. I take it sometimes and find it nice

i call that a skill issue

I agree that the negatives of Sunday Driver are somewhat overstated. That being said when I was a noob I did get trapped by it, so I can't deny that it is (for me anyways) a true noob trap. It's just that if you go back to the game with more experience you can work around it, making it a viable option once you understand its limitations

In SP you can hit "More" on your saves, like how you add mods, and actually select new character. Next to that is a drop down which allows you to switch between them. So if you have one character but they will never have a specific skill you could make a different character to run your generator for you. I find that's really useful for maintaining my base while I'm off doing other things. Mechanic is there I can switch to to check traps and crops. Of course that may not be something everybody wants but since we don't have NPCs without a mod..

How does it mess up yiur game if you dont mind me ask

@@quarreneverett4767 Sleepyhead basically making you fatigue/tired faster and longer, and Restless Sleeper making you wake up every few hours, and decreasing the fatigue/tiredness decay rate

"Fear of Blood goes hand in hand with Smoker. Your character is covered in blood, 4th stage of Stress and everything, no water nearby: smoke a single cig and you reset the stress level to zero. Repeat it until you find water." Nah bruh fear of blood and smoker sucks don't ever take these traits. "Hearty Appetite is great, I take it for my min maxing foraging build (because if does up the chances to find food with foraging by 5% in this and that category) and yes, I still lose weight even with this trait. Had to down some of those 3k calorie fishes you can catch using maggots from all the rotting corpses around your base. Finding food in this game is real easy." U know what else upps the chances of finding food?Just having the hungry moodle lol. Also why not just catch fish using spears?What's the point of fishing rods exactly?They're literally infinite I have like 50 spears at my base XD. "I can't see myself picking Illiterate... simply because I want to have a working fridge at home. How can I have one if I can't read the generator magazine? And no... an illiterate electrician makes zero sense to me haha." As for illiterate I never pick it either because it sucks yeah indeed lol,tho not because I wanna have power but because I don't wanna spend literal months of my life leveling everything up lol(tho all I realistically need in all of my runs is just 7 fitness and strength(getting to 8 takes AGES lol)and 10 foraging:Pretty much it lol). "Claustrophobic is you constantly listening to heartbeat ASMR while reading books and having to do micro sips of Whiskey so you can sleep at night, other than that it's free points. Hell, pair it with Cowardly even... none of it will matter if you survive long enough." U don't actually have to take the micro sips of whiskey at night u can just fast-forward time to the max,wait till the panic moodle goes away,click sleep,fast-forward again and click"Yes"lol. No need for any alcohol whatsoever. ALSO:Getting panicked from claustrophobic COMPLETELY resets ur boredom moodle,so u can just read books indoors on max speed,set it to regular speed so the panic moodle kicks in when u get bored,then reset it back to max speed while watching carpentry,fishing etc in the early days;). Also yeah I always take cowardly aswell because if I'm out foraging at night(which I rarely ever do but whatever lol)it will alert me of that one pesky zombie right beside me lol,so it saves lives literally. I play with weak/feeble(whichever gives -5 strength)and out of shape/unfit(the -4 fitness one),aswell as very underweight. Drop obese and go very underweight dude:Trust me. U'll level up strength FAR easier due to being able to eat a lot of protein,unlike with obese... Ps:The main source of protein is fish;). U also gain weight FAR easier and faster than lose it(at 3x the speed I think!So u can gain 3kgs in 1 day and only lose 1(or whatever the weight measurement is in this game. Pounds?Kilos?I don't freaking know man lol). "Never take Sleepyhead because you think it's cute to have a character that likes to sleep a lot just because you also sleep a lot IRL. It's one of the worst traits in the game followed by Asthmatic, Deaf and Illiterate. Also, pairing Sleepyhead with Restless Sleeper will screw your game completely and it is the equivalent of spawning in West Point with sprinters only with 4x+4x pop..." I agree with this one yes. However u can pair Wakeful with Restless Sleeper and get the most benefit out of it THAT way,because,y'know:With wakeful u regain wakefulness(aka lose sleepiness)easier. Combine this with Restless Sleeper and u can go a long time without sleeping;). Good luck;) Also wtf was that last comparison XD

@@Ugh718 I'll defend my points. I have 1.2k hours in the game, I'm sure most of the info I'll say here can be useful to someone else if you really think all of it is wrong lmao. - fear of blood is annoying because of you constantly having to clean yourself but I've been playing for so long with it, I'm used to the trait already. And like I said: one single cig as smoker and you can reset even then 4th stage of stress. Not having smoker means you smoke 2 cigs and you get queasy - in the long run you won't smoke cigs because reading magazines and newspapers won't get you sick, then you'll have tons of cigarettes you've looted just sitting around and you're not smoking them - I don't like that, it's like I'm ignoring a mechanic and making the game easier. - yes, I know being hungry increases the chances of finding food through foraging, I do that all the time, especially while foraging farms. Hearty Appetite gives you a flat bonus % on mushrooms, berries, animals and package food - for a min maxing foraging build I'll take literally every vanilla trait that gives me radius bonuses and % on food - ideally pairing with a nice occupation (like how being a Chef gives you +50% on mushrooms). Foraging is so broken you might as well just skip farming entirely. I can't simply "eat a fish" literally every single time the character gets hungry with HA or else you might gain unwanted weight. The usual mushroom salad during a killing zombie spree break does the trick well enough. Spearfishing sucks in winter and has lower chances to catch fishes compared to rods, I just don't usually do it. Of course if you have 10 levels in fishing, nothing of this matters. Plus I like the idea of fishing with rod and bait, it makes sense in my head. - the player will want to read: period. No reading means no books to reduce stress (since apparently you hate smoker), no bonuses to skills, no recipes... you can't even make actual bread without reading, you can't identify poisonous food apart from holly berries, you can't fix cars, you can't treat crop diseases, no power, so no gas from gas stations, you'll be almost fully ignoring electrical, trapping and metalworking from your game... unless you focus your build into this or that aspect, which is lame imo (like being the illiterate electrician, illiterate mechanic or illiterate chef, or spending points into these respective traits). It might have so value on multiplayer obviously. - Yes I'm aware of speeding up time and resetting panic but veeeeery early game it doesnt work if you're coward + claustrophobic. As soon as you click on the bed to sleep, you'll gain panic again - it never actually worked to me. Maybe it's a framerate issue idk. Drink alcohol... have a beta blocker, sleep in a bigger room. Claustro + coward is literally free points, considering time survived and zombie deaths will increase panic regen late game. - very underweight with its shitty 60% damage reduction for melee, with West Point spawn, aiming for Louisville, with insane pop and actual 0 strength from weak? No thanks, I'll pass... I'll pass even if you give me all the machetes you can find. No matter how many spiffos I'll raid for their burgers,. Obese is the way to go in CDDA as well. There's no rush to lose weight. Remember, I'm eating all that mushroom/berry salad from foraging, I'm good trust me. - imho restless sleeper is only viable if you, like you said, have wakeful AND then have security guard as occupation... not worth it.

The amount of food you find in that game is constantly a massive amount. This means you're going to have to be careful you don't make your character vomit from overeating if you try to eat food before it goes rotten. And so much food that lasts longer is the chocolates and candies. Being overweight might have been useful in some early version (I don't think it was), but now it means letting all the food you come across rot instead while you repeatedly undereat. Unless you do specificially go for a winter start, where several foods are frozen solid when you loot them. But in this case I'd say a winter start just makes the game easier. Assuming you remember you need to have a fire to defrost things.

​@@TailsClock >Unless you do specificially go for a winter start, Quoting what I had originally said: >actually a positive thing to have when trying to survive in the winter.

@@TailsClock I also usually turn towns down to 0 and use the innawoods mod, which makes starting as obese incredibly OP as all your other calories must be scavenged from the wilderness.

I remember when it came out and I refused to fight anything I couldn't use the spec on for big numbers.

​@@Retanaruat this point in rs I have two goals which are cremate a urium shade, and chop a fire giant in half with only a halberd spec. That would be italian fingers chef kiss.

Story generators with a steep difficulty curve? Potentially, I haven't played a ton of zombie but I adore rimworld. Thats all I can think of.

It's really weird, I noticed that too! However since both are great games, i wonder if y'all have any suggestions?

imagine using both at the same time

@@timmychild2484 helen keller playthrough

Now there's gotta be a Paralyzed trait like maybe if you are paralyzed waist down you need a wheelchair or crutches and then there's a paralyzed neck down which disables all of your movements except like a 140 degree range of movement, and deaf and blind makes you a vegetable

@@soupcangaming662 add a dead trait that give you +100 points but you just die the second you spawn

"Hold my beer!" *drops beer on ground*

You should deafen yourself in the call for best LARP results

@@frellor6704 open a window and you see your friend bolt it instantly

@@pota2s561 Casually walk out, knowing he will only die tired.

@@frellor6704 sus?

the thing is panic actually decreases quite quickly after a couple weeks in game, and even before that the only way you'll be affected by the panic after going outside is if there's a horde of zombies right outside your base, in which case you'll get panicked anyway unless you're playing as a veteran. and even if that somehow *is* a problem, it's not too hard to find beta blockers to make it a complete non-issue. the worst part about claustrophobia is sleeping, but even that's pretty easy to get around if you know the places you can sleep early on, or if you find beta blockers. and as you said, the issue becomes non-existent a few months in, so at that point it's just 4 free points

Also, it's a waste to see perfectly fine human meat and not a single way to eat it.

One last thing: Restless Sleeper can actually be good, it depends. The worst part of this trait is that it slows down the rate of resting. You'll rest slower than without the trait. The "you wake up halfway in your sleep" part simply doesn't matter. Take a microsip of a beer can and go back to sleep (until they fix this exploit, then you'll have to manage sleeping tablets in your inventory which will be a minus). One good part that's never talked about though is how it forces you to get up at ~30 fatigue (if you went to sleep at 60) which is bad if you wanted to stay up for a very long time but is good if you wanted to min/max your time. Resting below 30 fatigue is 3x slower than resting above 30, so even with RS's slower rate of resting, it will still be faster if you take advantage of the fact that you can choose to never sleep below 30. You could do this anyway with alarm clocks, but it's annoying to figure out the best timing without a mod to tell you your exact fatigue. And finally the only reason I take this trait right now: alarm clocks are exploitable and in combination with sleeping pills/alcohol can be used to instantly rest from whatever to ~20 fatigue without spending any time. This exploit cannot go below 17 as you can't go to sleep anymore, so RS makes literally no difference if you do this, literally free points.

When I'm not doing something specific I play a lumberjack with weak, brawler, athletic and then fill out the rest of the traits. Stone axes are very good for their weight and your axe skill will level very quickly unlike spears which takes forever even though they end up being better for pure zombie slaying purposes. It only takes 3 or 4 fire axes before you are ready to go pure stone axe and no longer have to worry about looting vs foraging and fishing. At some point I go to the baseball bat factory and make a bunch of spiked bats to level my long blunt to the point I can fall back on a normal bat and still have a good clear speed when I run out of stone axes.

Skill issue

@@ohsheet6958 It's true, kind of a skill issue. Cigs are pretty easy to find and you can get a good stockpile early game.

@@soupcangaming662 Yeah, I always end up with over 100 of em, that'll last you a LONG while. Matches and lighters aren't hard to find either.

Why hello there

@@normalbabayaga2090 I believe it's when you get a specific amount of traits to be the best survivor.

Just fast forward, just don't get hit :D

Exactly. That is like saying “the best way to play the game is to not play the game”…… That kind of energy

@@kingol4801 with the no hit thing there's method to the madness though. I think it was mentioned in the video. "Get hit til you learn to not get hit".

One that recently came out. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978579731

Also wasn't sure, the guy who did the data for thin-skinned also did a lot of data mining of a lot of different things, especially valuable is his post on Lucky/Unlucky which finally destroyed all the myths about the traits, his posts are invaluable and one of the best data through the PZ community

"Someone made a decent deep dive of it on the project zomboid subreddit, but the gist of it is that it’s a small percentage of a small number." The subtitle is just the script copy pasted. Mind my voice was blasted before I sat down to read 7 pages of traits so my fault on that lol.

@@Retanaru nah bro you good I just found it funny

Not only it's not bad, but the difference between Unlucky and Lucky is so minor (sometimes non-existent), you basically never want to take Lucky. Funny thing is that due to how PZ code works the rarer the item the less effect Lucky has on it's spawn chance increase, basically for some very rare items there's no difference if you take either of the traits. There was a data mine post on reddit on these which gave a great idea why Lucky is basically worthless

@@DezZzO_YT I know the post you're talking about. The data he presents is correct and matches my own, but I don't agree with his conclusion that it's worthless.

@@vRANDv I tested out lucky and unlucky with my own methods before the data mine and played while swapping them for hundreds of hours and couldn't see any real difference, so the post really confirmed it for me that Unlucky is the pick, butI guess to each his own

@@DezZzO_YT Were you that guy who tested by looting muldraugh and posting the results on Reddit?

@@vRANDv I did my personal testing in Muldraugh indeed, but I don't remember ever posting this data on Reddit, so I don't think I was the guy

Possibly broken weapon mod? doesn't matter, I have 99 strength to grind and a lot of zombies to do it with.

It does, so the only situation where you run Underweight + Athletic is when you also take Fire Fighter, so you still at 9 Fitness

The main difference between 8 and 9 fitness is the massive reduction to running stamina usage. The rest is all the same per level and that's what you want. Obviously being able to run for a long time is great, but the real goal is the rest of the bonuses.

Same basic game design when it comes to the skills. Older zomboid felt like action osrs when there was no zombies around.