I think..... *audial* stealth is important, is what they mean. Which means "don't make unnecessary noise unless you know for a fact you can handle the ocnsequences" Visual stealth, clearly, is not very easy to obtain.

@@IronBoy-hf2lp Can confirm. The zombies can see you from beyond what your character can see without breaking Stealth mode if they are facing the right direction. if you wanna be visual stealthy, be always behind a fence. Which is not saying much

Change their sight to poor in the difficulty settings

Stealth is OP if you know how to exploit the zombies AI

@@UnnecessarilyLongUsername In my experience changing sight to poor is a good thing but sneaking only works when I’m close to a wall or a fence, if I’m in a open space it could be night or foggy they always spot me, even when crouched

Yeah it's a "you get 1 free tile before you are spotted" unless you stack crazy sneak with it.

me too, conspicuous adds so little negative effects that is not noticeable. almost all perks need a lot of reworking.

Wait the whole game I written in JAVA ?

@@AndroidFerret Not whole, but mostly yeah. Like lua for scripting.

Same, I’d rather be certain that I will be spotted at THAT range rather than gambling some bullshit. Consistent perks forever.

Yeah that's exactly why my immediate reaction to the zombie spotting him through that fence was "how?" It'd be very difficult for a normal person to notice that if they aren't paying attention to it, let alone a decaying zombie. I think it'd be better if they were only able to spot you in that situation if they were close to the fence, like maybe within 6 or so tiles. That way there'd be a reason why they could see you, like they're staring off into space directly at the fence and your silhouette was just enough for them to take notice.

My guess is that the developers just gave that type of fence the same properties as the more open white picket fences you find at farms. The only difference in the game is the textures.

@Pud Pete Sure, but the point is that you can't usually tell how a zombie found you in normal gameplay if they sneak up on you. It _might_ have been fair for all you know, and zombies going after you isn't so rare that it makes much of a difference. And if you _can_ tell, you're also not exactly going to immediately lose a character because some zombie spotted you from far away. Death is always going to be a combination of many factors, and the game has enough RNG in how zombies behave in general that it doesn't really set you back any more than a bit of bad luck would have. Of course that doesn't mean there is no effect; this "feature" definitely makes the game harder. But so long as the outcome is the same vs "fair" difficulty (which it almost always will be), the only thing that can really suffer is immersion. Of course the exception is if your playstyle really heavily depends specifically on zombies not spotting you through fences, but people generally don't play like that. And fences mess with pathfinding in a way that still offers you some protection by making it easier to get away from a zombie that does see you, so there's still a tangible benefit to sneaking close to fences.

I'd say the problem would probably be coding it in the game, i agree you should be able to sneak behind a fence if the zombie physically cannot see you but that'd be a compromise on overral game performance i think

You can always make the it is a game excuse but if you strive for realism it has priority over difficulty for the sake of difficulty.

I've got the worst hobby...

@@Retanaru I'd imagine it's on SS13 levels of spaghetti code. Amateur dev teams first game, 10 years of development and in Java..... YIKES

And has more love and care put Into it than most triple a games with millions of dollars in resources “gta trilogy” yikesssss

It sure is less spaghetti then Minecraft. And that is counting Minecraft for Windows. You know.. The AAA Windows version made to replace Java. PZ is one of the first greenlight Steam games. And still being worked on. Still works better then TF2 or any AAA game that comes to mind really.

@@jamesbogart3334 *cough* old school runescape. though mod ash is unspaghettifying it day by day

Fun fact: Zombies can hear your footsteps too if your light footed and sneaking is levelled too low

i wouldnt take either tbh. just leave that in the middle. Conspicuous makes ur whole sneaking stat worthless and if u play on any pop higher than normal u will hate how many zombies u attract. Clumsy is free points. I wouldnt say conspicuous tho, pretty big risk u take if u pick that trait imo.

@@Brent22 You can still sneak with conspicuous, you just do it more with maximum view distance / line of sight / cone of vision work. The main difference I observe running with conspicuous is that zombies will see you through windows when you're indoors much more often. A pretty marginal difference

You just gotta constantly scroll wheel in and out. There's also a setting for auto-zoom (but I hate it).

@@Retanaru There’s an auto zoom? That sounds pretty cool, what’s wrong with it? Is it really jarring when you have to keep going back in and out, bc perhaps a hot key could help with that when base sortign

Don't forget lag.

Realize that it's per tick though, so if you're in range for 5 ticks it's like 80% 5 times vs 40% 5 times, which works out to 100.0% vs 92.2%. So in that situation, and most situations, you're really only gaining a very small chance of not being seen, something like 4-12%, not 50%. The fact that it gives _A_ chance to not be detected does not make it worth it. For instance if it cost 20 points it would not be worth a 5% chance of not getting spotted, right? so it matters the _specific_ chance of not being detected for it to be worth it.

Just kill all zeds that spot you lmao

@@Buorgenhaeren based 💪💪

Did this demonstration not teach you how garbage the trait is?

@@EpicAMV911 I don't really care about playing the game optimally. The demonstration simply explained to me in-depth how the trait works.

@Grhifen sure but you're still going to have to fight them lol

Agreed. It was quite a shock for me coming back to the game after years away, and experiencing how alert the zombies are these days. I read that exact line about stealth being important, thought it sounded fun, 100% maxed my character out for stealth, and was then severely confused as to why it was near impossible to play that way. It's not that maxing for stealth doesn't do anything, but that overall the gameplay loop doesn't make it a realistic option even when you try to focus it. The most practical form of "stealth" in the game is to deliberately get spotted a few at a time, and whittle the zombie numbers down. Once an area is lower population and stealth is now practical, you still shouldn't be sneaking, you should be deliberately culling them whilst manageable to prevent re-population. Every zombie you leave alive, is another roaming liability that will only spot you later, so it's safer to be a hunter on your own terms, than hunter on their terms. Since I still wanted to try a proper stealth focused playthrough, I setup a custom game for myself. I reduced the zombie population to 40% of it's normal, eventually ramping up to 100% (so like on day 1 of default settings). I reduced zombie eyesight to poor, with normal hearing still. This made genuine consistent stealth play possible, but to bring the threat back up a bit I made Zombie speed random. The presence of unidentified sprinters (and not being a combat focused build), made the usual tactic of deliberately baiting and losing a horde a total non-option. A five second sprint down the road was basically a death sentence, and things could get hairy really fast if you slipped up and started letting more than a handful see you. Overall I think my custom game mode design worked pretty well.

Whats the point if theyre just gonna spawn back. Zombie spawning in this game feels too op. Without spawning, theres already tons of zombies you will realistically never get close to killing all of them. Just feels pointless spending so much time wiping out a horde just for one to spawn out of thin air in a couple weeks. The games Zombie migration is made so there is an even spread of zombies througout the map and will fill in areas with low zombies.

@@shooper3472Just turn off spawning in the custom sandbox settings. That’s what I’ve always done. Most people seem to think the game gets too easy when you can create safe areas, but I never get much past the first week so… personally for late game I’d like to see less zombie-diffusion and more zombie-concentration. The max group size should slowly increase until encountering lone zombies is uncommon, and instead you’re facing down migrating hordes. That would create a real endgame challenge for base defense.

not for me...i have hundreds of hours in the game have you tested for hundreds of hours too?

@@HomeAloneGaming1 I have. Why? Wanna measure e-penises? Cause you are coming off that way.

This is honestly a super big brain comment.

Front-facing jaw stabs is entirely based on two things: Crit chance (dependent on the weapon, and which also increases with weapon skill level), and whether there are any _other_ zombies nearby that can see you. For whatever reason the distance that zombies can be to disable the jaw stab is quite long, like maybe 12-15 squares or something ridiculous like that. They added it as a safety measure a while ago so that you don't get attacked while performing the animation, but it really ruins knives since it means you can rarely ever sneak attack unless it's the only zombie. They should have made it only like 2-3 squares away. Aside from the cleaver and hand scythe, short blades have a chance to instant-kill animation, and only when no other zombies see you, not really a crit chance. In other words any normal looking attack will never get a damage multiplier. This is an extra kick in the nuts to short blades since they already deal the worst damage of all weapon types and also have the worst range, and don't attack any faster.

@@SkeleTonHammer oh no it was silly broken, as soon as you get the timing down you could literally kill infinite amounts of zombies no matter what the toughness levels was. just have 3 knifes and some duct tape and you'd be fine. 3 knives weighed less than a baseball bat anyway

@Shy Cracker I feel like getting into this kinda nitty gritty min-max behind the scenes code stuff before you even play a game is a good way to never enjoy a game. Ive been enjoying the game after getting back into to it for like the 5th time in at least as many years, and even I don't really want to minmax. I'd rather just install mods to change things to my liking, and roleplay a little, and enjoy.

The only reason I'm here as a new player is because me and my friends are finding it really annoying to really figure out how stealth works. No matter what build we tried, it all ends up with luring zombies behind a tall fence. We don't wanna min max, but the game is really really annoying at presenting solutions, and its very disheartening to find out that the reason why it was frustrating to begin with is because the game AI cheats. I mean, realistically speaking, if a zombie follows you into a house and you're in another room/floor sneaking, it should start to wander because it has no idea where you are (and zombies typically have reduced brain power). But in this game, it just pinpoints your location like an FPS vac hacker.

the biggest fuck this profession is veteran. no panic, not ever. unless you get infected or have agoraphobia/claustrophobia. you can really train your combat skills when you dont lose all your stats to panic even in the face of hundreds of zombies surrounding you.

Where did they say they were updating the combat?

@@Ives1776 it was on a version roadmap somewhere there was the update with wildlife (thats suppost to be next) then combat with covering and overhaul of fire and then first part of npcs of course it will probably change it was just plans

You pretty much cannot stealth in the open, and it takes very high stealth skill to even have a chance at sneaking a small gap and that's against a single zombie. On the other hand stealth play via staying quiet and out of sight is much much easier.

i fucking hate trees in this game. This is why deforestation exists in my town.

Graceful is for sound

tested this and watched some videos; it looks like they work on different principles. graceful just reduces the circle of "noise" that you make, as does wearing no shoes. inconspicuous is just a flat reduction to the spot check that zombies make when they are looking at you. pure chance. combined, they have no effect on eachother, but in tandem it makes you very capable at stealth even with no ranks.

@@NotThatOneGuy One thing to note is that the Sneak and Lightfooted skills only gain experience when you're not currently detected by zombies. Having Inconspicuous + Graceful will help you level these skills faster early on (do they give an exp boost as well?) which will compound their effectiveness. It seems the meat of those traits really comes from having high sneak/lightfooted skill points anyway. You could always find a way onto a roof and sneak around to power level these skills if there's a large horde underneath you. It seems you gain more experience the more zombies are around, provided none of those zombies have you detected. It's also a way to check if and how many zombies are around you that you can't see by hovering over your sneak skill and seeing if you're getting experience and how much.

Without graceful

Completely anecdotal

@@user-dp9rb9ll3s My bad for saying "this positive trait helped me" I guess?

@@ClareAmel yes

It works.

If i understand correctly, inconspicuous add a percentage to the roll check when the zomebie spot you, and the check happen everytime you or the zombie move while in zombie spotting range. The more zombies present, more check you have to succeed in order to not being spotted. Obviously, the trait works, but nobody know for sure what’s all the factors in the zombie spotted roll check that the game calculated in the background, so it’s hard to say how much this trait really “worth”. If you can spare the points, then it’s ok to take it bc low chance is still better than very low chance imo.

For the most part yeah, it seems to only be useful when crossing lines of sight and wanting to remain un seen. Like if you were in a house sneaking around and a window was open. With the inconspicuous trait it’s less likely the zombie will see you through the window when you cross into its line of sight. This might be useful early game when trying to close all the curtains of late game when exploring unknown locations. But all and all it appears to not have as big an impact as you’d think. Better to just amass zombies and level up sneak and nimble while hiding.

It's hard to say due to it depending on the circumstances. For instance if you normally have a 70% chance to be spotted and have inconspicuous so that it's 35%, you would still need to factor in the number of ticks that they can see you for. For instance for 4 ticks it would be a 99% chance of getting spotted vs 82%. So it's probably quite a weak trait, but it's not useless.

As far as I know smell doesn't work in the beta build.

You can just stand up to do that. No need to sneak 24/7. Mind I've been taking conspicuous and doing exactly that with the pulling.

It significantly improves the odds only in the specific case of moving high cover to high cover with only a few tiles between them. Which is staggeringly rare except for window peeking. But if you're window peeking, you can just let them see you and stomp their heads as they climb through, soooo

I'll test them out in the future.

albjectively a perfect comment

Outdoorsman also helps reduce 50% of being scratched when going through trees, also increase chance of starting campfire when using the notched plank. -2pt its a must

@@Cloudy_Int you're still not completely immune to walking through some trees, it's pretty rare to scratch yourself in trees anyways but it's good to have the chances.

Launch the game in debug mode. To do that right click the game in your steam library and click properties. Then type " -debug " in the launch options. Load in and press f11. click options>pathfind and then checkmark "pathfind.render.path" . Press f11 to leave the menu. PS. pressing N puts you in godmode.

Conspicuous*

Rats, we're rats, we're the rats, we prey at night we stalk at night, we're the rats!