On top of those I like to take High Thirst - it's very easy to get around, since you usually find a bottle early and then just make sure to keep it full.

Imo feeble and out of shape are one of worst traits to take - strength and fitness are really hard to lvl up, plus they are important early on to fast advance in combat skills and scavenge more efficient. Its better to take slow healer, thin-skinned or high thirst

Pro tip, NEVER EVER choose any of the overweight perks. The stat debuffs and exp debuff make the hame unplayable later on. Also, whereas with underweight, you can just find icecream and fats for the first week, those items would likely be wasted with overweight/obese.

High thirst is pretty easy to manage. I usually take thin skinned as well since a bite is a bite. I don't think I've ever gotten infected via scratch.

betas: pick smoker because of free points chads: *_pick smoker because they are addicted to nicotine in real life and they wanna relate to their ingame character_*

My first game ever I took all thumbs and clumsy. I was panicking while being chased by zombies and did not have time to pick anything up. Why did I ever think that was a good idea.

Don’t forget about claustro and agoraphobic They’re annoying to deal with initially, but once you’ve survived for long enough the panic becomes a trivial issue Agoraphobic is also easily exploited by keeping your zoom at the minimum. It works on how many tiles you can see on screen

Great and concise as always, I’d love to see one of these about the helicopter event - seems like the prep and/or dealing with it as it happens would make for a good video - thank you for all of the informative, no-fluff, well-spoken advice!

I always choose the deaf trait, mainly because the noises stress me out too much so I play without sound anyway. Easy 12 points

slow healer is a big one for me. obviously if you are uncareful its hell to recover, but a whopping 6 points? i'll take it for sure.

bro you literally just made me in real life with those debuffs

Very nice list of traits to take, you my sir have convinced me to add a few extra points to spend.

Fitness is the most terrible skill to train so I NEVER recommend fitness reduction. Also, if you do want to reduce your strength, you may as well go all the way to 0 since lv 1/2 can be trained in a day. Low fitness will make training a lot harder though.

High Thirst and the appetite equivalent are both pretty free too. And I think Conspicuous isn't really that impactful either if I remember right.

*High thirst* is also totally manageable, I always pick it. *Slow healer* is also a go to. In fact, I feel like those to traits make the game more realistic. And finally, for solo game, *restless sleeper* combined with *wakeful* gives you 4 points to spend and only requiere you to split your character's sleep in 2 parts, as they will inevitably wake up during the night. You can make them read a book while waiting for being able to go back to sleep and grab a couple of hours more of rest.

Do you actually live long enough to train back fitness and strength you lost to those traits? It takes insane long time. Btw what I like to do is to use underweight and athletic on a fire officer so you will still be lvl 9 fitness and not lose the athletic bonus.

I've found high thirst isn't so bad either if you use a large drinking container.

HARD OF HEARING IS THE BEST, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TURN UP YOUR GAME VOLUME AND IT NEGATED. it dosent reduce the hearing circle around your char and i don’t take keen hearing so it’s free 6 points

High thirst is also really easy with auto drinking and a water bottle or 2.

fear of blood turns out manageable to take, and at least it’s a reminder to clean blood as blood + scratch ≈ bite

Regarding weak stomach you also got to make sure not to eat burnt food. That almost killed me once.

I tested short sighted and never again. I kept losing my glasses because they dropped for whatever reason (zombie hits, vaulting or tripping) and could not be bothered to go look for them. I found out anyway that I like more roleplaying as myself or someone I know, so I only got one optimal character build saved.

Those are the bread and butter traits 🍞🙏

No one's going to mention Sunday driver? Gives you 2 points, and the only downside is that you drive slower, which I would recommend anyway, because it helps keeping your character alive. I mean, there's nothing in the game that can catch up with a car anyway, not even on slower speed, so why the hurry? 😉

prone to illness, thin skinned, weak stomach, agoraphobic, cowardly, high thirst, conspicuous, underweight, and slow reader are the ones I pretty much always take now. Can drop conspicuous if you really want to play sneaky but I want to fight zombies anyway, so it doesn't bother me. You can take adrenaline junkie for extra move speed since you'll pretty much always be panicked. I don't like taking smoker because I hate smoking IRL and can't bring myself to do it in this game either lol plus it's one more thing to manage and I have enough to think about as it is.

The one I feel like everybody sleeps on is Fear of Blood. Basically wash yourself when you get blood on you....which you should do anyway....And you are good to go.

I always take deaf trait Why ? Because turning the sound off gives the same effect

Don't forget high thirst, it's the #1 free-est negative trait, I've never played without it and not once felt like I was being punished by it.

hearty appitite is one of those traits I feel gets slept on its very good people think its worse than smoker because of having to eat constently but with the foraging changes they made so that winter berries are extremely easy to find past foraging 3 it makes managing this trait very easy would reccommend over smoker because finding cigerates especially on very low loot is a pain

The asterisk next to Slow Ready should specify to not take it on multiplayer servers, unless you want to stop playing and go read an actual book.

And you dident even tock the most important "slow driver" that is almost an sort off positv trate effect!

Here's what I don't like about these 'Optimal/Free points' negative traits: TLDR: Prone to illness, Weak Stomach, Overweight/Obese are the only ones worth taking in my opinion, if you want negative traits that are easy to live with or deal with. Smoker: You always have to carry matches/lighter + it takes a few seconds to smoke and you'll be doing that throughout the day, also in the beginning of the playthrough, it always takes me a few days to find some on zombies or in a building, especially harder when loot settings are very low. Prone to illness + Weak Stomach: These might be one of the only traits that I'd consider okay to take, they might be a pain in the ass at some point, but for prone to illness you're okay as long as you find warm clothes. Slow reader: Books are already slow as hell to read, and this makes it even slower, I get that in singleplayer you can speed time up, but it is crucial that a new player spends all the time available in the first 2 weeks to see 'Life and Living' for optimal XP gain and also read some of the books related. Short Sighted: This one is another that might be okay, however if you trip on a fence or somehow fall, your glasses might fall off and you'll regain the debuff. Underweight/Overweight: Depending on loot rarity, either of these is really good, I almost always however just pick Obese, there is more weight + more points, and you can lose the weight in a few weeks, it is also good because you don't need to constantly worry about eating to gain weight like how it is with underweight. Feeble + Out of shape: If you're also picking underweight/overweight or very-underweight/obese, the effects stack and your Fitness/Strength will be really low, and doing exercise to level these up is really slow in the game, it can take a few weeks of training every day just to gain a level.

Slow healer is great

Last time i picked underweight, and got the out of shape debuff, too? So next time just take both debuffs :)

Personally i like to avoid taking feeble, training to higher levels is always pretty hard, usually you need almost a month to increase your strength skill (it depends on the starting level of course), but 10 points for strong are well spent for my opinion

I really don't like that smoking is part of the meta... It gives a bad message, heavy smokers frequently have trouble running for a long time (not all of them, I know, there are other factors, but lost in pulmonary capacity is a thing)... It should be nerfed...

Strength and fitness are diffiult to level, so other than under weight, I would avoid anything that lower the stats. I also don't like slow reader as I like to max stats gained from TV shows such as getting to lvl 6 capentry. Claustro is free points for me, the challenge being sleep. It can be compensated for by setting up a bed in a large room or drinking booze. Save beta's for fighting. Thin skinned is also free points to me. One bite and your zed anyway. High first is my 'first' choice. All depends on play style though, different games, different traits.

im just speaking for myself, i cringe when people ask me to subscribe at the beginning of videos, before your worthy content. I will subscribe based on what i see not you asking. just a tip please dont take this as rude. You have great content, im in your comment section for a reason lol!

High first is one of my go to’s. It might screw you early game if you need to run for your life without finding water bottles first, but once you got 3 bottles you are pretty much set

Lumberjack, strong and fit 10 strength (melee dmg + carrying cap) and endurance like a mofo. I kite zeds, jog away, sit down wait for then and fight them again. Repeat till a horde is dead

Underweight is preaty good. it's much easier to gain weight than it is to lose it.

Didnt know about the glasses lol thanks

I took underweight and keep eating food while forgot to check the weight. After the helicopter event, I found my character being overweight.

I never skimp on fitness or strength infact those are usually what I dump the majority of my points into because its a pain in the ass to grind it and it makes a super big difference in actually making your character viable. Ignoring mods more traits (cuz they got some super nasty broken traits in there like hardy and even more negative traits that mean literally nothing but free points) and fitness gain boosters to make it not completely suck in multiplayer My setlist is gonna vary depending on whether or not I'm in multiplayer in single I am totally fine with things like slow reader in multiplayer I cannot stand it I am either gonna take fast reader or illiterate no in-between. A lot of traits like fishing or foraging that I will happily grind for in singleplayer I will opt to just get for multiplayer. Never gonna recommend overweight over under because with underweight you cram food down your food hole 24/7 and walk around with the stuffed buff which is a total positive when you aren't worried about burning calories. Overweight on the other hand will have you walking around weak afs not for being overweight but because you are literally starving yourself to get rid of the weight. Not too mention in the early game food is relatively plentiful and perishables haven't gone bad yet. Don't waste your time on weapon skills unless you playing with more traits the vanilla skills are just not worth. Lots of quality of life reasons to take or not to take perks. I don't like smoker at all just find it annoying to always have a moodle and be constantly worried about having a good lighter and smokes. Hemophobia is also really annoying for that same reason. High thirst as most have mentioned is ez af, sunday driver is whatever but it doesn't give you anything for points anyways so who cares? Lumberjack for life burglar is good too but I think the game is more enjoyable when cars are few and far between so I don't tend to have my game set for that to really be advantageous

for underweight overweight do you get your -1 fitness back then when ur weight goes normal?

I like to use thin skinned because, like prone to illness, putting on a jacket cancels it out pretty much

recommend making a strong character feeble is not that good, pick high thirst with slow healer that gives you an extra 12 points

Hey Spoodle, you should probably do a video with all the negative traits you can. Bye Spoodle.

I like conspicuous and sleepy.

Haven't the over- and underweight traits been nerfed so that the accompanying traits like "out of shape" don't disappear once you reached your optimal weight? At least that happened to me one or two patches ago.

Pacifist is a must pick. For 4 points you only get slower weapon xp gain which is nothing

for me the best negatives are: 1.smoker 2.prone to illness 3.weak stomach 4.high thirst 5.heafty appetite 6.unconspicous 7.short sighted and if i'm aiming for a marathon run i add out of shape, very underweight and weak so i get more point to add on bonus xp on weapons but don't recomand it for novices players because you start with 0 Strength and 0 fitness

If you say maybe use -2 Strengh / Fitness you should consider starting strengh / fitness 0. Why? the early level are cheaper to gain. Fitness 0-3 is 10500 xp you can gain in about 10 days of fighting.

Smoker. All fun and games until you don't find any cigarettes until day 3 after checking 30 houses.

How about a run with all negative traits?

Only 1k subscribers left :D LESS GO SPOODLE!

Regarding overweight and underweight. The wiki states that your max fitness is 9. Does this limitation go away once you hit a normal weight number? Cuz if doesn't, you didn't mention it which is crucial cuz long term you're actually gimping your character much more. Not so much early game. Not to mention everything else the wiki states, but I assume those are just descriptions of being in that state of weight. Some trait descriptions say that "the trait itself give this or that" which isn't present here.

subscribed! also, thanks for the advice...

also pacifist and hight thirst is top negative traits.

I was always kinda paranoid about "Prone to Illness" because I worry that it could increase the chance of a Scratch or Laceration causing zombification. Obviously being bitten has absolutely no chance of surviving, but scratches only give a 7% chance of contracting the zombie virus and lacerations give a 20% chance (or maybe it was 25%). Does adding the "Prone to infection" trait increase the probability of scratches and lacerations infecting the player with the Knox virus? If so, by how much?

there isn't any "needed" positive or negative trait. people can play how they want, i just take unfit and extremally underweight for my character and do amazing

back on track again

I just started playing and suck hard at this game so I gave myself 40 free points and still kinda suck. I just wanted to get used to things and how to craft and see the map. I can't imagine doing it legit and have negative and or less skills, this game is hard when you have ne clue what to do.

Boost to fit and max strength always

Whats the point on having 41 points to spend and most god traits are blocked if you pick the negative version. you cant pick strong if you pick feeble... it doesnt make sense to pick so many negatives for positives if it ends up blocking the really good ones you want o get.... Also a sleeped on negative trait is unlucky. its pretty minor and also free points. the 10%less rare loot isnt noticable that mutch. I also dont recomend picking prone to illness and pick outdoorsman. Its very bad when you have a cold and with outdoorsman you can just stay outside for almost forever and you will like almost never get sick

On a server i choose a character with the pacifist trait bad thing is that i dont want my character to die becouse i spend some hours with that character so i am mad that i have 25% lower skills gain from weapons, so dont pick the pacifist

My problem with smoker is more of a RP issue. I hate smoking, plain and simple, and refuse to take it based on that even if it's free points.

I pick sunday driver and unorganized for one big reasons. A: not organized in real life so it fjts B: why drive fast when the fastest thing you have to worry about just about matches your walking speed? They only add a few points so definitely add some of these on top.

high thirst is also very good.

dont forget about high thirst just drink more water and you get 6 more points

My Least favorite Trait Is Smoker Because I Just Find It Annoying And Frustrating Also If you Play Multiplayer Don't Chose Slow Reader As The Higher Skill Books Will Be Painfull Slog

Some ppl say that high thirst is also a must have but it contradicts with weak because you need to carry more water. Also its just very uncomfortable to have 1/5 of gameplay filled with pouring water in bottles

Feeble is a good negative trait, but please for the love of god dont take Out of shape, low damage? no problem, keep smashing them and eventually they will die, low carrying capacity? get a backpack, its everywhere. If you get overwhelmed by zombies make sure you can run from them, being exhausted mid fight with horde chasing you would suck. Also, strength and fitness are the two most difficult stats to level up, of the two strength is actually the easier and more pleasant to level up, with high fitness you can exercise your arm more effectively, theres also dumbells if you can find them, fighting zombies and carrying high loads will also increase strength, and the lower your strength is, the faster it is to level up so you can hit level 5 fitness pretty fast to make feeble go away, all not possible without fitness traits. Another thing is of the two Overweight and Underweight, i take Underweight all the time, its better to eat and be full then just starve yourself, full stomach boost your damage, healing rate etc... Athelic + Feeble + Underweight is a great combo, just eat exercise and repeat, once you get level 5 fitness you are good to go, its too easy.

I heard once that you can go negative in fitness (maybe strenght too?) and that prevents you from ever reaching true level 10 as you start from the negative and stop gaining exp once you max at 10 levels. Anyone can confirm this?

Welcome to Spoodleville, population 14.3K

Hemophobic is just free points. Just stay clean and wash your clothes once in a while and you should be fine

no to feeble takes way to long to train and no to overweight

Imo smoker gets annoying after a while so if you are that kind of person i would not recommend picking smoker

Ok now what about positive traits?

Sunday driver is free points let’s be real and honestly it’s an upside if you don’t know how to drive

you forgot high thirst and conspicuous

what about obese ?

Slow reader is annoying. Even with sped up time, it still takes a ton of time, both IRL and in-game. Not to mention it makes it impossible to meta-game Life and Living if you're looking to do that. Overweight/underweight - as I understand the minus to fitness you get with these does NOT go away when you fix your weight, so that's a no from me. Feeble and out of shape are also a terrible idea. Strength should be as high as possible if you're going melee (which you are, if you're a newbie) and fitness means you can fight for longer. Having to rest more often is not necessarily that big of an issue, getting exhausted in the middle of combat because you engaged a larger number of enemies, is. I never take these, quite the contrary, I ALWAYS take strong and athletic. Now, what can you take instead: High thirst - easy to manage. The most negative you'll get out of this is that you'll carry 2 bottles of water instead of 1, but you can still get away with only carrying one. Hearty appetite - with the fix to calorie burning while walking/sprinting in the latest build, you can easily manage your weight even if you take this.

What about obese?

i personally really don't recommend slow reader in multiplayer if your not gonna read books in mp just pick illiterate

Thinned skin and Slow Healer, words to keep in mind, just dont get hit.

Spoodle do a mod review for the Bastard Sword mod

Question (short sighted): Do the glasses in character creation negate them or are those appearance only?

u should note that smoker is annoying af because you have a constant permanent additional chore to do and the -1 fitness penalty for under/overweight is permanent and DOES NOT get negated by ideal weight. since fitness is the most annoying thing to level and one of the most important skills, this is a serious decision you have to make dude.

If you're like me, just make a sandbox mode you can give yourself extra point traits! Lol

Slow healer n high thirst baybeeee

You wanted 15k 2 months ago now you have 33k

Pacifist, high thirst, hearty appetite disorganized and unlucky are pretty much free points too. Just get one of the skills that give you a multiplayer for a weapon type like baseball player to get extra weapon exp for free. Disorganized can be a bit of a bother when it comes to space in cars but with a trailer you should still have more than enough. In your base, just make a few more storage boxes. Unlucky just reduce your chance of getting rare loot (like axes and rare magazines) by 10% but it’s hardly a bother in the long run. Fitness and strength negative traits are definitely not worth getting, both skills are a pain to grind.

I'll never pick smoker.

What do you use to see those details on the traits? Is it a mod?

Sunday driver

I allways play deaf lmao

How often do you need to smoke to manage the anxiety?

Thin skin gamers, just don't get hit

I've always picked Hearty Apetite, High Thirst, Slow Healer, Smoker and Underweight. Food and water isn't hard to find, chain smoke thousands of cigarettes that you easily find and wounds take longer to heal which feels a bit more 'realistic' imo. Also thin-skinned since a bite will take out the chaddiest of characters anyway.