Use me as a "petition for negative trait tier list" button

Thank you for including the trait names instead of just using their picture, it'll make looking at it a lot less of a headache

TIMESTAMPS: 0:37: Speed Demon (A Tier) 1:16: Cat's Eyes (S Tier) 1:30: Dextrous (S Tier) 1:42: Fast Reader (C Tier in Multiplayer) 2:06: Outdoorsman (S Tier) 2:35: Wakeful (S Tier) 2:47: Iron Gut (F Tier) 3:03: Angler (A Tier) 3:14: Baseball Player (B Tier) 3:22: Brave (B Tier) 3:47: First Aider (F Tier) 4:31: Gardener (F Tier) 4:48: Graceful (B Tier) 5:09: Inconspicuous (D Tier) 5:39: Light Eater (High C Tier / Low B Tier) 6:04: Lucky (D Tier) 6:30: Nutritionist (F Tier) 6:40: Resilient (D Tier) 7:00: Runner (High D Tier, near S Tier if versus sprinters) 7:15: Sewer (C Tier ("You either want it, or you don't care")) 7:40: Amateur Mechanic (C Tier, misplaced in D Tier) 8:03: Gymnast (S Tier) 8:23: Brawler (B Tier) 8:32: Cook (D Tier) 8:46: Eagle Eyed (D Tier (take Keen Hearing instead)) 8:59: Fast Healer (C Tier (best if playing without infection or with a way to survive it)) 9:13: Fast Learner (A Tier) 9:20: Fit (A Tier) 9:27: Former Scout (D Tier) 9:38: Herbalist (B Tier) 9:54: Hiker (B Tier) 10:19: Keen Hearing (S Tier ("Highest possible S Tier trait")) 10:29: Low Thirst (B Tier ("just for the quality of life bonus")) 10:54: Organized (A Tier) 11:09: Stout (A Tier) 11:16: Adrenaline Junkie (F Tier) 11:37: Handy (A Tier, S Tier if your class doesn't start with a maintenance bonus) 12:01: Hunter (Stated to be B Tier, but placed in A Tier (best trait for skill point to cost ratio)) 12:22: Thick Skinned (D Tier ("if infection was turned off or survivable, it would probably be pretty good")) 12:42: Athletic & Strong (S Tier) BREAKDOWN: S Tier: Keen Hearing, Athletic, Strong, Wakeful, Outdoorsman, Gymnast, Dextrous, Cat's Eyes A Tier: Handy, Fast Learner, Fit, Stout, Hunter (?), Angler, Organized, Speed Demon B Tier: Baseball Player, Brawler, Graceful, Brave, Herbalist, Hiker, Low Thirst, Hunter (?) C Tier: Light Eater, Fast Healer, Sewer, Fast Reader, Amateur Mechanic D Tier: Thick Skinned, Runner, Lucky, Cook, Eagle Eyed, Former Scout, Inconspicuous, Resilient F Tier: Iron Gut, First Aider, Gardener, Nutritionist, Adrenaline Junkie

Since you talked about how good runner is when playing with sprinters, I'd say the same about graceful: tripping with sprinters is a death sentence, and even 10 fitness characters can trip on a sprint jump (tiny, but enough that it matters on the long run, and it increses with certain negative moodlets I think), and every bits that reduces that chance helps a lot.

nutritionist is one of those traits you should take on your early runs so you have an idea of the nutrition of all the different foods besides canned goods it also lets you see the goofy things like how candy is actually a good weightloss food

i think dextrous is not just about that last min pick, its about something you do throughout the game aka inventory management which kinda saves you a lot of time and hassle.

Taking a bunch of the traits with the hidden increased foraging chance and reduction to darkness and weather is always hilarious. Some naked person walking around in the forest in total darkness in the middle of winter with a pack full of food, weapons, and gadgets, they are finding in he snow without a problem at all.

I just tested thick/thin skinned a few days ago. If you are wearing at least two layers of protection and the zombie attacks that part of your body, the worst outcome you can receive is a zombie biting through the top most layer destroying the patch, putting a hole in the clothing and then they will always be stopped by the next layer with no damage to it. It worked 10/10 times on all trait combinations. If you have one layer of protection or less on, a zombie can bite through the clothing and bite you or destroy the clothing but not bite you. The only areas of your body where you can have one protection layer is the heads and the hands, but helmets are bugged right now and will block an attack but not receive any holes/condition loss. For gloves it was also 4/10 success rate for successfully stopping a bite on the hands regardless of trait combo, but this might be a sample size error since I only tested hand attacks ten times. For having 0 protection values thick/thin skin works as advertised but the numbers are off. The wiki/mod states you have a 30% increase/decrease in receiving a zombie related injury, but when I let a character still and get attacked while naked 100 times from the front/back I got a 15% increase in zombie injuries from the front for thin skinned and a 9% reduction in zombie injuries from the front with thick skinned. I kept track of how many were a scratch/laceration/bites and I found no pattern here either. If you are attacked from behind it doesn't matter what traits you have, your gonna receive an injury anyway. I'm confident that thick/thin skinned are at least doing something for the character if your naked but I'm not sure if the games being janky like normal or if I just got a bunch of outliers for my test docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qoh4KCLuE60C2hw-6whgEuzhDmH9Ty__QF7v16a_ciM/edit?usp=drivesdk Here's a link to the actual results of my test where I counted if no injury, scratch, laceration, and bites if anyone wants to read it. Maybe someone who didn't play league of legends through high school/college can read it and tell us a lot more than I can. Maybe the numbers are adding up and I'm just stupid or the sample size isn't big enough

I didn't realize this at first, but Fast Learner combines really well with other xp boosts. For example, if you start with 1 level in Axe (such as by picking Brawler), you'll receive about 3 xp per zombie kill which is quadruple the base xp of 0.75. However if you take Fast Learner, you'll earn 3.9 xp per kill. The 30% bonus multiplies on top of the existing xp bonus.

I knew some of the quirks with how traits function, but this video really highlighted just how many traits have weird mechanics behind them. That coupled with the knowledge from your other videos has really helped me when evaluating which traits I should be taking for my playthroughs. Thank you.

God. I remember watching the same video from you a year ago. It was so long ago.

Taking all the F tier traits, I want to suggest reworks for them all, and by extension reworks for their stats. Iron Gut - Reduce chance of pain from overeating (Overeating should cause pain or some similar debuff, maybe it can make you slower because you can’t move around as much?) First Aider - Rework First Aid to allow to cure various actual illnesses like colds (somehow idk how), use less medicine when taking painkillers, sleeping tablets, etc as you learn proper dosages, and being able to accurately tell how long your wound has to heal like how higher Farming skills give you more and more of an idea how long the food has to grow Gardener- Rework Farming entirely; much less yield and no seeds until level 5 at least. It’s far too easy to just plop shit down and be set forever. Nutritionist - uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk. Learn how many calories you have currently? Adrenaline Junkie - Killing a certain amount of zombies grants you extra strength and fitness (can go above 10) for an hour or so? Something substantial for the amount of points it gives. Obviously killing more zombies resets the timer. Maybe something like 20-30? It would need to be fine tuned

I always kept saying that anything related to taking damage or character's health is pretty useless, because you either never take a single hit or you instantly die

I'm usually not a big fan of using speed demon or Sunday driver, but I have to admit that the speed that Speed ​​demon gives you when trying to transport another vehicle is beautiful. Makes trips that can take hours so much faster :) (it's also dangerous to use it with deaf characters because the increased engine noise doesn't let you tell if it was a noise event or the car)

fast reader is seriously underrated, it allows you to read books quickly enough for each and every show if you make it to a library and grab the necessary books fast enough, not to mention it's a crucial qol trait in mp

I always take Graceful. I love the reduction in trip chance. And because I also always take Gymnast, I tend to get level 10 Lightfooted before long. You are practically a ghost when you are level 10 Lightfooted with Graceful. You can jog up behind zombies even on pavement undetected. Great for short blade instant kills.

As expected, awesome tier list, unlike many others on YT.

Disappointed that fast learner isn’t at the very top of S tier, it’s by far the most important trait in the game, for any build, and for any character life length. Even if you live less then a month. There’s absolutely no point in not taking it, the extra XP is an unbelievable advantage, i haven’t made a single build without it since my first day of playing.

Good video! Thank you for being so concise

I'll give my opinion: - Speed Demon: I would place it lower. I can't see it making much of a difference. Really, it's more that it's a 1 trait point and if you can fit it into your build, why not. If it can make towing a bit easier, and vehicles a tad more responsive, that's a cool bonus for one measly point. However, I wouldn't take it by default, driving is fine without it. Gotta drive slowly anyway to avoid dying from car crashes. And then, because of the sound radius thing, it's going to be a malus for most people. - Outdoorsman: I would also place it lower. It's impossible to catch a cold anyway. It's a strong trait that does a lot of things at once, so for 2 points it has incredible value, but none of its bonuses do a lot anyway. Never catch a cold, barely ever get scratched (the goal is to always walk to to avoid trees), and foraging doesn't need the radius to be useful (or overpowered, even). - Brave: I would place it lower given that it locks you from taking Claustrophobic. You might think it costs 4 points but it really costs 8. That's simply too expensive imo. I will place it higher when TIS fixes the microsipping exploit that allows us to easily negate Claustrophobic and combat panic. - Gardener: It is indeed a crap trait, but it stands as one of the 'ok' traits to gain foraging radius with. Now I know I just said radius isn't needed for foraging to be useful or op, but I think it deserves a special mention for this, at least. D tier would be more fitting. - Graceful: Instant S tier for me. Tripping is super bad. Holes in your clothes, scratches or lacerations on your legs and arms. Can't fight for a day or two. Worst case scenario, you get bitten while you recover. Sure, you can give wide berths to windows and fences to avoid zombies ever lunging at you. Sure, you can never jog vault a fence. But it's undeniable that windows and fences are the most powerful tools for killing zombies, especially sprinters. Graceful is insanely valuable imo. It deserves S tier 100%. - Inconspicuous: F tier. Just trash. Costs the points that conspicuous would give, so 8 points for nothing. - Lucky: A/S tier imo. It might not be a lot more loot, but it's more loot, which is always good. More chance for long johns, leather trousers, machetes, katanas, VHS, books and magazines. More loot out of the entire map. I played CDDA a lot with unlucky and lucky and I can say it makes a noticeable difference. Also, it's the best trait for foraging radius (.25 radius per point). Deserves to be much higher. - Resilient: F tier, does nothing. Also costs more points because there's prone to illness. - Runner: A/S tier, for everyone, not only sprinters. You're telling us how important fatigue and endurance and calories are. Well, the faster your character is, the less time it spends running. Less endurance used. Less calories used. Less heat generated. Less fatigue overall. The first level takes you from 90% to 110% speed, that's simply insane - 22% speed increase. I would kill for such a constant speed increase in any game. You'll reach first level anyway, but getting it sooner, and having subsequent levels sooner, is just too valuable imo. Other than endurance/fatigue considerations, less time wasted moving is also very valuable imo. This is the type of stat that goes mostly unnoticed, but is very valuable nonetheless. - Tailor: D tier imo. Any skill increase traits are valuable, but tailoring is so easy to level by itself that there's no reason to take this. It's the same as Gardener, minus the foraging bonuses. - Mechanics: C because it's pretty much like Tailor or Gardener but Mechanics is super annoying to level. - Fast Healer: I would consider it F tier, but for people who play without infection I could consider it D tier. The entire point of this game is to never get hit. And honestly, wounds are not punishing enough even with slow healer. Even a deep wound will heal in a couple days without being stitched, it's ridiculous. - Fast Learner: S tier definitely. Any xp increase boost is incredibly valuable imo. The grind in this game is a bitch. The less there is, the better. - Fit: B or C tier for me. Athletic or nothing. 9/10 fit or 0 fit. Costs too many points to do almost nothing. Fit is incredibly strong, but 2 points is meh. What you're looking for is the athletic bonus. Spend 4 more points to get athletic please. - Hiker: Same as gardener, former scout, tailor, etc... it's got some foraging radius bonus and a bonus for a skill that's either easy to level or useless. Trapping is useless and tedious, while foraging and fishing exist it has no reason to be in the game. So, D tier. - Keen Hearing: I would make it A tier, not S. It's very good but simply not needed. It's for sprinters mainly. In a point-demanding build I would skip this, even when I'm fighting 24/7. - Low Thirst: D tier 100%. It's good that it exists for the situational game where you intend to exile yourself somewhere in the woods with no water, but otherwise the trait is useless. Please, nobody take it when trying to make an optimized build. Get High Thirst instead, get 12 (12!!!!!) more points, get Strong with them, and use the extra 6 carrying capacity to carry one more 0.7 bottle with water. It's a no-brainer. - Organized: S tier for me. More space in your bags, an entire more encumbrance point in your fanny packs (from 1 to 2), more space in your car seats, trunk, trailer, in your base. It's just too good to pass up imo, especially when 50% of this game is looting and moving items around. - Stout: Same as fit, 9/10 or 0 imo. The strong bonus (for melee damage) is the entire point of increasing strength imo. B/C tier imo, not A. Spend 4 more points to get the actual amazing bonus. - Hunter: Trapping and sneaking being 100% useless for me, the only good thing about this is aiming, short blade, and foraging radius. Too expensive for these bonuses. You can get short blades with burger flipper (which has 1 maintenance and is super cheap), and foraging radius is meh (this trait is amongst the worst for radius too). So really, this trait is all about the +1 aiming which you can't get any other way. Hence, 8 points for aiming. C tier for me. - Thick Skinned: The most expensive trait in the entire game at a whopping cost of SIXTEEN points. F tier, utter trash, get thin skinned and buy something worthwhile with your 16 points, like strong or athletic. You get hit = you die in this game, never get hit no matter your bonuses. This barely does anything anyway by the calculations I've seen (something like, you go from 20% chance of dying when you get hit to 16%). I agree with all the rest. You never have enough carry weight though.

A nice way of power leveling cooking skill when combined with foraging (or someone high in foraging in MP). Collecting bugs that have a "uncooked" tag next to their name can be stacked and cooking these in bulk will level your cooking skill very fast when paired with a skill book.

Easily hands down the best trait tier list since you have been testing soooooo many things in this game.

This man singlehandedly being the living wiki for zomboid

Hey Retanaru, your previous tier list stream has a few noticeable differences in where you placed these traits. What has changed from your tier list streams to now? Playstyle? More experience playing? Philosophy? I'd love to know and keep up the S tier content

Finally! My life is now complete, until the next balance patch of course.

Sunday Driver and Speed Demon are like opposite traits. Sunday Driver dramatically reduces the likelihood of bouncing off a suddenly-spawning tree at 90mph.

I tend to look at the forage bonus types and percents when deciding if scout or herbalist, etc is worthwhile for a build. Their usefulness will rely on the player's settings but those bonuses can outweigh the xp bonus since it's ridiculously easy to level.

i like lucky as i often do forage for goodies, its a renewable source of a lot of materials and food - and combined with the other S tier traits, you have a notably large forage radius that doubles as a multiskilling task for nimble. you can get entire boxes of ammunition, and its the only renewable source of long blades and other rare weapons (which show up slightly more often with lucky). both burglar and veteran are highlight occupations with impact bonuses.

I think fast reader should be higher, especially since it costs so little. Just because you can increase game speed doesn't mean actual game time isn't passing. I have every single skill boosted, so when I use that skill I actually get the bonus xp. I'm able to knock our my level 2-3 Carpentry book, while still finishing the others. I'm able to go to bed at 12-1:30 instead of reading till 3 am and can wake up at 7 and am out the door and maximizing daylight for long excursions and do other things around my base. I can get xp boosts for trapping, foraging, cooking, and farming early on. Things like cooking are easier early on when there is electricity for fridges and ovens. In the event I get a laceration or some other injury I already have the first aid boost up.

The first tier list i 99 percent agreed. So Accurate. The low thrist is the only one i don't get water is plenty but maybe you are right if it were less points than sure. I always take Dextrous, Gymnast, Wakeful, Outdoorsman and Strong or Athletic.

The real deal is starting with nearly every negative trait and grinding yourself into a god

you don't take in consideration the amount of points some of these traits cost too much for what they bring, for example 6 points for low thirst is huge since it"s almost useless, it should be in F section.

really nice tier list as far as meta players are concerned, though i think brave is F tier as long as beta blockers exist and you're not playing on 16x pop. graceful and cat's eyes are surprisingly underrated traits for most people when they can be kinda lifesaving, but it's understandable since they're both really specific. cat's eyes might save you from sneaky blending zombies on certain terrain during certain moon conditions. i think thick skinned is worth it if it were like 3 points IF the stats on that one reddit post are correct and it just translates to like an extra 12% chance to negate or reduce damage to its next injury tier(big w if it was a bite and it turns into lace); it's essentially just another layer of rng manipulation in your favor ala graceful in a similarly limited capacity. ideally you never get hit/fast climb fences/tall climb while threatened the entire time you're playing, but if you had points to spare and this thing essentially gives you another chance to positively these worst possible outcomes, it seems pretty worth it. also i think SD should be S since it prevents car stuck horde on a decent number of cars as long as they're not towing and you're not like 10+ rows deep, at least until zombies proc their car deletion ability lol

I’d really love to see you test thick skinned. I’ve been taking it because of the targeting priority bug. When my shove or swing goes through a zombie and hits one behind it, my hope is that it might let me dodge infection sometimes when the nearer zombie gets its free hit and clamps down on me. I just don’t know if it’s actually doing anything for me though.

Thank you ❤

Dope! Thank you!

Hey Ret, could you make a video detailing to effect of the foraging bonuses on traits and occupations? Cuz high hunger has a positive forage bonus, and i wonder if these numbers are multiplicative and etc. Like, if with veteran increasing ammo by 50%, and lucky putting that to 55%, would you benefit in avoiding all other forage radius buffs other than levelling the skill to enable a player to target specific items? Cuz imagine if we could inflate the numbers, of food only, or junk only, for nails etc. Or all the other specific boosts? Cuz if so, that could make a whole new form of build, "Statistical Manipulation" viable.

Hunter is great for gun players. Short blade makes a great back up weapon as you can fit most of them on your belt. It does really low damage initially but once you start getting levels in it it kills really quickly. Also the low stamina cost means you have more stamina to run around to reposition once you are ready to shoot again

Awesome video

10:51 THANK YOU.

would you consider giving your thoughts on the more traits mod? i think enough of the community uses it to warrant a video, i mean discussions on the subreddit happen sometimes but you have a very deep knowledge of the game

I think you should do a video on lucky/unlucky since it's a trait that is heavily recommended by the community.

I learned the iron gut thing after eating a rotten apple by accident when moving it to compost. Said "eh screw it I'll be fine so got iron gut".... Few minutes later I was dead.

As a person who regularly starts with 0/0 strength fitness i think putting the strength and fitness traits on the same tier is really odd, in a little bit you will hit 6 strength naturally but fitness requires deliberate effort through the excercise system, what's even worse for fitness is the excercises favor strength with pushups seeming to be the fastest xp and squats barely being better for fitness than burpess while the latter is also leveling your strength it's just just so so much easier to level strength over time than it is fitness if you're going for a lomg playthrough

very good list i agree with this!

I do realy like that even for some of the less desirable traits, you bring up situations in which it could be useful, as *most* traits in this game are worth taking, even for niche reasons that don't come up all that often.

great list, only one I disagree on is baseball player. crowbars and spiked baseball bats already have so much durability I dont think the trait is nearly as neccessary as the other weapon skill traits.

Angler B Tier. It's more of a "convenience" trait. For 4 points, you could easily just find the 2 books and just miss out on the other bonus's. Plus, you could always snag outdoormans and wakeful with those points. Handy should be in between A and B. You could always take repairman for 4 points. Gives a fair bit more across the board for only 4 points. Baseball player C tier. Brawler should be B tier. Although it costs 2 more points, does give you an extra bonus to axes. Axes are pretty much infinite. Brawler and Handy are the 2 most difficult traits for me to rank. Handy is great for maintenance, but its just so damn expensive. This is just my Opinion. No way reflects your rankings. I agree with your rankings! Amazing job. ***As a side not. No other youtuber is even close to the accuracy of this video.

_Burnt_ food is a death sentence?! Have the devs ever burnt food lol

For a basis, traits have pros and cons according to each ones strategy and playstyle, putting this aside, I enjoyed overall most traits while others I had much more use for them. While some people have shorter term needs, I usually go for medium-long term. Fast Reader for example is a trait that affects every single skill, while dextrous is just for actions and I find it is very situational, so it's just a bit too high. Graceful could be avoided so it goes B, but Dextrous feels like the same so why S? I guess it's a good concept you took, I would like for you to do a second ep maybe with a new tier list having in mind the different time windows people will do in their run-through and your opinions on the influence also in picking traits according to where people expect to base or stay around.

It would be nice to see your cover what exactly zomboid lore settings do, such as hearing and sight. The game's a tiny bit vague and they don't seem to do much.

Overall I agree with the tier-list and it's made me re-evaluate my character build. I would like to make note of some specific traits however; Speed Demon I am mixed on. I love it but can't stand it at the same time; I love it for the obvious reasons I can't stand it because of the noise your car makes. I love cars, I love driving and cars are crucial to me so that's a big downside. I'd still put it high on the list. Organized I would put in S tier easily especially if you're a loot goblin and you're driving a vehicle with the highest cargo capacity. This trait makes it even more worth it. Thick Skinned I'd put in F tier no problem - it's as you said if you don't get hit in the first place. Handy I would put in S tier because it offers you something throughout the whole game that most of these traits lack - so any trait with that characteristic I put in S tier. Such as that and Organized or Keen Hearing etc.

I understand Outdoorsman in cryogenic winter, but other than that how often exactly did you go hypothermic or even cold for it to be rated this high? Usually I just sit back in my car and wait for the moodle to drop back to shivering at least and that's only in cases I care more about the drip than insulation of my character's body as a conscious self sabotage. I don't know about that one. The damage on trees can hurt the drip as well, but I avoid trees entirely as zombies can hide behind them and I'd prefer having safe quick escape route between trees rather than through them, but I guess it's auto-pick for Lumberjacks or Park Rangers I forgot which had the bonus speed walking through them.

How are you calling Brave a late bloomer trait? Since Brave is less effective later because of desensitization, it is better off earlier until your fear is reduced.

Your math is off with visual stuff at 5:30. Checking 100 times is only a 63% chance to get spotted within one second, 87% chance of getting spotted within two seconds, and a 95% chance within three seconds. a 50% spot reduction means a 39% chance within one second, a 63% chance within two seconds, 78% chance within three, 87% chance within four. Either way though 39% chance is still really high. It's one of those traits where on paper it sounds good, for example peeking around a corner for half a second would alert only two zombies instead of four which is much more manageable.....but in actual gameplay situations like that are extremely rare.

What do you think about the actual in-game time saved from fast reader? The real life time saved might not be that big of a difference when you fast-forward, but if you end up reading more than a few books I'd imagine it would add up, especially if you die and don't want to reset the world. Edit: You forgot to mention that Organized saves you crate space in base since the trait applies to every "container".

Do oyu think they gonna fix the glaring balancing prolbmes in 42 and or the broken traits?

i remember seeing a post about speed demon using a bit more fuel then no perk too

Actually, a character with a 0.01 chance to be spotted per check has a 1 - (1 - 0.01)^100 chance of being spotted in 100 checks, which works out to a 63.4% chance of being spotted. Some example values (% chance of being spotted | % chance in 100 checks): 50% | >99.99% 25% | >99.99% 10% | >99.99% 5.0% | 99.41% 2.5% | 92.05% 1.0% | 63.40% 0.5% | 39.42% Here's the general insight, without drawing too many conclusions because I don't know at what rate the game makes checks for zombies to spot you, or what the baseline chance of detection is. Because this is all probability, you will almost always pull some fraction of the group you want to sneak past (if you walk in their LOS), so have a plan for dealing with those stragglers without drawing the horde. Maybe get more familiar with your short blades.

at 12:17 is hunter then a B tier or A?

Eagle eye has a hidden downside of not being able to take short sighted which is free points

Trait tier lists are the best PZ content in existence

can you do a video on walls and defenses? I adore your videos

Good video

Wakeful sort of has a downside, it can make your sleep schedule wonky and sometimes necessitate using vitamins where you otherwise wouldn't need too. Your sleep pattern will start to shift.

Alternative to speed demon, just yank the car behind you. Stop, back up, and yank, and repeat

Speed Demon is the only trait I gave a flat out "NOPE" to when looking over them. Like I figure I'd just end up wrecking more cars if I went that much faster, not to mention the louder reversing. In hindsight though, I probably should have flat out rejected more of them.

I wish first aid was more useful. I think it would be cool if they added a more in depth sickness system, like influenza, fever, etc, where people with a high medical skill can conjure up medicines with herbs and such.

hey... can you tell me what song background on this video? thanks

What about the desensitised trait you receive from the veteran occupation? Imo natleast a tier but maybe s tier as the immunity ti becoming panicked from hordes makes it much easier clearing them early on

I am seeing a topic about generator noise and people discussing about it if covering it with walls help with noise or not? Do you know about it?

Great list ! I would say angler is probably too high though. In any of the default game modes it isn't that useful since there is so much food by default and you can easily go months and month on canned food alone. In custom modes or modded modes with less loot it because much better though.

I didn’t even think of the better towing capabilities from speed demon 😂

Eagle eye is an S tier when you play against sprinters, specially at night when your vision cone gets reduced. You always have to spot those bastards as farther you can, specially when they do the curve attack.

Does Eagle Eye affect shooting at long distances? or is that a Dynamic Traits buff? I remember the Visibility Arc doesn't matter at all but the ability to shoot farther and more accurately with a pistol comes into play. Retanaru, are you able to debunk this?

main problem with cooking recipes is that all the interesting foods (burgers, pizza, cake) that you make with the cooking recipe rely largely on perishable foods that are no longer a thing a month into the game when the power fails and all those freezers are now holding rotten beef. You don't need those recipes to open canned food and make chili + potato + carrot stir fry.

I know the devs don’t want to rebalance traits right now because the game isn’t finished, but man they could really use it. There’s a lot of 6 point traits that should be 2 points, lots of useless or misleading traits, and trait mechanics that are straight up not functioning correctly. I’d really like to see traits get some polishing

If low thirst is B tier because it saves you time in the long run, wouldn't fast reader be a B tier as well? The time you spend reading could be used in other tasks. Even better if you consider the less time grinding the skills if you use TV and VHS. I know it's a vanilla game video, but in modded ones fast reader makes it possible to use mod features early on :) Anyway great video! Thanks :D

Speed demon is S tier for sure considering cruise control exists the only real negative is the extra reverse noise which is meh as you can learn to drive and use the ridiculously small turn radius to pretty never reverse or you know who cares your in a car just drive away. Keen hearing is a great crutch for new players and good if your playing with sprinter zombies but outside that far too expensive for the benefit compared to other good traits for experienced players who already know how to keep their head on a swivel. Handy is great for multiplayer if your going to be the groups builder but for single player especially one character runs 8 points is far too expensive, just VHS tapes and books can get you to around level 6 without swinging a hammer with first week tv shows on top its closer to level 8. Brave is honestly only worth taking if you having short lives aka playing multiplayer with pvp enabled as otherwise the natural panic reduction from living more days plus beta blockers or booze already give you enough panic reduction/recovery. Fast reader S tier for multiplayer to the point where you should either take it or full on embrace illiterate which itself can be an S tier trait for multiplayer as you really on need 1 person to work generators. Low thirst F- tier as water is plentiful and it locks you out of the free 6 points high thirst gives. Lucky ranges from S tier to B tier. For games where you want to go majority gun usage its an S tier trait as from my own testing it is at least one extra ammo box per gun store crate and mostly several extra boxes per crate. If your focusing on say axes its a solid A tier perk due to the extra repair chance and repair materials found let alone extra axes found. For anything else like long/short blunt and minimal gun usage its a solid B tier as it does not do much to increase rare loot like sledgehammers. Hunter C tier at best 8 points for a slight exp boost to aiming is pretty bad and the rest of the benefits are for skills that are very meh. Amateur Mechanic for a hobby trait per point spent is only behind gymnast and brawler solid B tier for single player and saving time as mechanic is an annoying skill to level.

personally i like inconspicuous, as I'm often fighting large numbers of zombies and you can really see how often they get thrown off by it. this allows me to control dangerous situations a lot safer. I do think it should basically always be coupled with graceful, since sound ruins the visual check pass without fail.

I've always been told that other than the horn, the only thing that affects your vehicle sound is if it's on or not. Meaning, zeds can hear it the same if it's idling or moving. Someone correct me but i want to say it's on the wiki.

mostly agreed, except for Adrenaline Junkie trait. Adrenaline Junkie does cost 8 points and has a very low cp, however, it is very likely the only way to run away from a horde when you are exhausted and can be a potential life saver. At least every time when my character was hunt to death made me hoping I should have taken that trait.

this tier list is very situational

Video request: towing - how much horse power does the car need to have extra to compensate for Sunday driver and how much less HP for speed demon to be as good as without either trait.

Thick skin has saved my “skin” so many times I always use it

think it's funny that S Tier ended up just being, like, all of my builds

I want you to make the bad trait vdo just so i can watch more of you content.

I thought organized also means you find loot on multiplayer servers that other people didn't see because it expands the loot table or something. Can you test that?

I did find a use for Adrenaline Junkie, by combining with Runner and dealing with all sprinters. The 10% boost is just enough to give me enough speed to outrun sprinters. The trick being that if I get far enough ahead of them that I can't see them behind me, I calm down and then they catch up!

Actually eagle eye is kinda good. By default your FOV is about 145 degrees, with eagle eye it's about 160 which is a 10% increase. However if you are extremely tired and panicked, your FOV is reduced to about 50 degrees, but with eagle eye it's around 85 which is +70% and it's insane. But of course having ultimate panic and tiredness is almost a death sentence anyway plus eagle eye and short sighted only works during daytime, so keen hearing is definitely better.

There are so many players that underestimate the power of Keen Hearing, especially when runs go horribly wrong and you have to fight off a town of zombies while on foot. Once that house alarm goes off, you don't have a lot of time to 'check your surroundings'.

Are you gonna do professions too?

Angler is an F tier trait, not because fishing is trash, but because fishing is wayyyy too overpowered. At 0 fishing with a wooden spear you can easily catch enough fish to gain weight by just fishing at the right times, unless you're feeding a squad in multiplayer i can't imagine a need for it for 4 trait points

for me lucky is a god send since everytime i use it , i find ammunation for guns like at the very start with it

Hi Retanaru! I am an spanish streamer that will participate in "Permadeaz". It will be 7 IRL days with 30 streamers. If your character dies, game is over. PvP is allowed. Can u suggest me a trait combination? (I have 150h into the game with high knowledge). Do you think Police Officer is the best option?

One thing I will personally say for the Tailor perk, is as far as I know you *CANT* get thread from ripping clothes until you have level 1 tailoring or higher... so not only does it give a skill bonus it means the only things you need is material and a needle to instantly start using the skill which makes it much less of a headache... Along with it meaning literally every zombie you see being walking tailoring XP in more ways than just ripping all their stuff. Another small thing, low thirst is also good for "Armor" builds or people who often wear lots of heavy clothing even during hotter seasons (leather jackets, police vests, etc) Since if I am not wrong sweating causes you to need to drink more often as it is... So as someone who (despite avoiding injuries like the plauge) loves wearing himself WAY too much armor for it being 71 degrees outside can be very helpful... but I frankly never take it since 6 points is WAY too much imo, since that puts it in the same cost category as fast learner... between those two, I will always take fast learner no matter what, it increases ALL of my XP gains and easily saves me so much time and materials to learn skills while high thirst just saves me a little bit of time of needing to find a sink/get water every couple of in game hours while walking and fighting outside.

I would like to not only see a tier list for negatives, I want you to do the More Traits mod as well. It is a broken mod, but i f*ing LOVE it and I would like to know what you think about the traits in it. I use it constantly.

I love nutritionalist because i always run a group chef in multiplayer, however i feel like 4 points for something so mild is a bit overpriced, imo

Thick skinned is so OP it should be in A or S, defo not D. I remember I used to use thin skinned all the time since I thought "well if I get bitten or anything I'm probably dead anyway so no use wasting 8 points" but when I switched to using thick skinned, it was insane how much easier it made it to not die. I don't know the exact numbers (and I usually play with a bunch of mods on so maybe some mods that I've been using make the trait way better) but when using thin skinned, the idea was basically if you got scratched a little bit, better fix it quickly, if you got hurt even a medium amount then all of a sudden it's a crisis, if you get bitten or anything you're just dead. But when using thick skinned, you can just tank everything and bandage it up later. If you're using the fast healer trait with thick skinned then injuries are way less of a problem and you'll probably only die if you really screw up or if you get mauled to death in the middle of a huge horde. Also I'm pretty sure thick skinned reduces the chance of zombification from getting bitten significantly, since when using thick skinned I've been bitten on multiple occasions and not been zombified (after waiting multiple in game days) whereas a bite used to be a death sentence. Also another thing, even though the strong and fit traits can be really overpowered and helpful, I wouldn't rank them S or A since even if you pick the opposite traits (e.g. unfit, underweight, weak) you can eat and exercise in game to get these traits without spending any points. So if you're planning on surviving for a long time I'd recommend not spending the points of these traits

I find it curious how highly you ranked outdoorsman for cold avoidance. Is getting a cold really a common enough problem to call the trait S tier? Vanilla cold is very easy to deal with, most players will have enough clothing to avoid hypothermia a few days into a run. Even if you do catch a cold by the time winter has come around you've survived for several months and will have a base and supplies stockpiled so it's really trivial to get rid of it (Not to mention that players rarely survive to see winter anyway). I can see the argument if you're doing winter starts but that to me would make it situational and therefore mid-tier.