The real reason to take keen hearing is so you can actually see where your going as you walk through a deep forest since the keen hearing circle ignores trees close to the player for some reason

This might have convinced me to try out hard of hearing as a negative trait sometime. Never going back to deaf though. Tried that and the absolute silence is just so quiet that it is deafening, funnily enough

the deaf trait is quite flattering to the actual deaf folk, I can imagine they appreciate it

I feel like Hard of Hearing does need the perception radius lowered a bit, but the real annoyance is the muffled SFX imo, they just sound weird to me

I showed this to a friend who is a PZ fiend, and he pointed out a very small but still potentially lifesaving difference - sleep. When asleep, the hearing traits directly affect the likelihood that the character will be woken up by alarming sounds, and thus alert the player to dangers approaching while asleep before theyre right on top of you.

Not sure if it still does but I remember a few builds ago Keen Hearing increased the volume of all ambient sounds in the game too - got bit of a shock when I took Keen Hearing and the game decided to roll in a tropical storm the first time while I was wearing headphones.

Deaf is a really good trait to choose if you are playing with friends imo. They'll notify me anyways if something special is going on and since I was new to the game, I had no sounds to overwhelm me.

One of the cool things about picking deaf is that along with a few other staple negative traits, I can afford to take Strong and Athletic. Sure, I dont know when a house alarm or helicopter event is going off until I see zomboes coming from all directions, but with such strong stats, running from or even fighting the horde is a lot easier than most people realize. I really dont like playing without any audio though, even if it means I can watch Retanaru videos in the background easier. You're the only Zomboid-focused channel I know of that really breaks down the in game effects of different traits/skills and, more importantly, the hidden functionality and synergy between traits/skills. Anyone could read the wiki, but you are actually in the field running tests and making observations. It's much appreciated Edit: I forgot to mention Trombonaut

God imagine tripping a house alarm while deaf

I used to run hard of hearing fairly often, but the muffled sound honestly just irritated me so I almost never use it nowadays. I always run keen hearing when playing with sprinters because at some point, one of the bastards is going to run up behind you and I do think keen hearing can give you an edge in that situation. And I've literally never taken deaf because I've always found the zed audio too useful

On three, repeat after me, RETANARU! RETANARU! RETANARU!

Keen Hearing is great for obvious reasons, but I always felt Hard of Hearing > default and it's nice to see that mostly vindicated. I will take the points and quieter rain over the small situational awareness buff any day.

I find when I play deaf, zombies tend to fade in much slower. Normally, it takes about 1-3 seconds With hard of hearing it took about the same, but fade out is much faster, so when I turn away, they fade out of my view much faster. Deaf was a problem for me as it took anywhere between 7 to 9 seconds for zombies to fade into my view, which meant for the first couple of seconds, zombies standing right in front of me are invisible for quite a ridiculously long time. I suspect it's to do with the fact that I play the game on a potato laptop.

This is a very well produced video. I particularly appreciate the on screen conparison with the colored tiles. You have a new sub. Keep up the great work!

Always doing the god's work. Thank you.

They should add hearing aid parts as a rare loot

Do deaf people have better "perception" due to other senses being heightened? im not saying Indie stone took this into account but could this headcannon it? I dont need to be able to hear to know someones coming up behind me, thats based on numerous other factors.

ive always played deaf~ its 12 points to allow me to blast whatever music i want to die to. The perception range is now a cute bonus

Deaf people in real life choosing the deaf trait for a free 12 points: "I see this as an absolute win."

Thank you very much for all these in depth game mechanic testing to showcase how traits actually function in game compared to what their description says. Some players swear by certain traits and their effects, when in reality it never even made a difference in the game. Shows that most of the traits are really for role player purposes than for any real impact to gameplay.

YESSSSS I was JUST combing your videos yesterday for these types of videos.

Even with sound turned up, from my experience with Hard of Hearing very rarely (maybe 1 in 100?) a zombie will make no apparent sound [for the player to hear ]while approaching a player's character. Ever since not taking the trait (so normal hearing, not Keen Hearing) I've never noticed that happening. If it wasn't for that one issue I'd have still used Hard of Hearing, but as-is it seems like an eventual a death sentence if ever you alt-tab or look at the map or just aren't facing the right direction while filling fuel or reading a book.

I love the deaf trait. All my characters are deaf. In multiplayer the biggest downside- not hearing alarms- is negated entirely by having a friend nearby. In solo... well lets just say ive had a few unpleasant surprises. I started grabbing deaf because i always have stuff playing in the background when playing this game, so i could hardly hear anything anyway. I always grab eagle eyed and night vision as well. This has given me a huge appreciation for some of the visual cues the game has, since i always play it in total silence. I even turn the music off lol.

the fact that the deaf trait still allows you to "see" zombies behind you is insane xD we recently started a x2 pop no respawn deaf run and it's not that bad, obviously it's not a beginner thing since whenever you loot anywhere you have to be extra careful with alarms and meta events

Major props for advocating evidence based testing. You're right about myths becoming lore. I wonder what sort of things I'm doing to manipulate non-existent game mechanics 😅

So, technically, hard hearings can be a positive trait because of a reduced bubble range. The panic increases drastically if a zombie sneaks up upon you, which is a problem if you luring the crowd or clearing out places w/ a shotgun and w/o aids, because large chunk of zombies tending to crawl behind you, so the panic meter goes wild. Reducing hearing bubble means that you can more easily control panic in combat. Although it becomes obsolete with pills, large chunk of zeds(at wich point the panic will be high any way) or after month in game. So yea

I knew this tip before I got into PZ and I've been playing the game with hard of hearing every single run I did because of that

2:13 Snipping the definition and just putting it on the screen made me giggle a lot more than it should. :D As always, great stuff.

Iiiiinteresting. I've personally been playing with all sounds off because I hate noise-based tension and jumpscares, so I might have to try Deaf sometime if I need the points.

Idk i always pick keen hearing. Its S tier for me. I have very good headphones and I can hear everything. It has saved and helped me so mutch. I also am pretty good at pinpointing where the zombies are based on sounds. Its my goto trait

as someone who plays without audio, i see deaf as a absolute win.

I used to think Keen hearing was a must have and I've had it the majority of the time I've spent on the game. After having condutced some tests it seems to me that the loudness of sounds between keen hearing and normal hearing is the same. I was under the impression that you'd spot zombies from behind you 50% further away. But now that I know it's 1 tile and the trait cost 6, I probably won't be taking it anymore. Bummer I have it on my current character I suppose.

My opinion is that "Hard of Hearing" should work as a super thick reverb filter so the sounds are unintelligible, not as flat volume reduction because that's countered simply through settings. Also hearing reduction traits should definitely reduce perception radius out of sight.

The best thing about the bad traits is that if you know what you are doing you can use them as positive effects. Like Hard of Hearing during loud storms.

I take hard of hearing almost every single time. It's always felt like easy points, and now I know why.

It's okay for these sorts of things to be quirky. It makes the game more interesting.

I usually pick deaf when i'm playing in 6 month later scenario because not only i don't need to worry about house alarm but also the point it give allow me to go strong so i can fight the horde from the get go.

Considering i watch KZfaq on my phone while playing, deaf is just free points. Nice

0:57 the window after 9 months: 🤰

love how the captions bombard me at the first 2 seconds of the video

If you never don’t take hard of hearing, it’s free.

thanks for this, it's pretty useful

I play deaf on every character because I'm usually listening to music or a video of some kind. The only trouble I've come across is in Vanilla where I can't tell if my gun has jammed/emptied or if I'm experiencing desync. It's also funny because you'll occasionally hear the weather for some reason. It made multiplayer RP fun and hilarious. Turns out it mutes proximity chat. My brother regularly conveyed to other players that I was deaf. I supposedly had a habit of leaving camp circles mid conversation. If they typed to me I'd only acknowledge them if I were facing them, as if I were reading lips. I'd also Ctrl+V " (ASL) " into chat before every sentence.

I can't test it atm, but if memory serves me right: When you have Hard of Hearing the range at which you hear things also diminishes vastly, which can lead to some very awkward situations.

I've been taking hard of hearing trait almost since I started playing. Regular hearing scared the crap out of me the first time I didn't pick the ttait after months. Was hearing in game sounds I had never heard before (Wolf howls, animal noises, how loud thunderstorms are)

Ran Deaf with a friend for a bit, as long as we stayed together it's negative of not hearing danger was almost never a factor. (Was funny when we would enter a house and he would say "Did you hear that?" Or we would enter and kill a zombie or two and I would start looting and he would open a door to more and not say anything expecting me to hear them and then act passed I didn't help him until I said "I'm deaf dumbass".)

weird moment with deaf is when the tv is on and you still get the xp boost even when you arent watching.

Don't even play zomboid but I still watch

I grew up in a household where sound was heavily.. regulated. Audio leaking from my headset caused many a problem throughout my teenage years. So now I just don’t play with sound. On any game. To this day, in my own house.. I still typically forgo sound. After 100 hours of Deaf PZ, I opted to try hard of hearing. The jumpscare music alone killed me the first three times I tried. Only reason I’d consider being hearing at this point is if it’s required for walkies / radios in MP.. which I have yet to confirm. Also, you have to stare at the TV if your deaf. Blew my mind that you could wander the house while still getting skill points from L&L.

My Zomboid characters have almost always had keen hearing and shortsighted because its what I have in real life. I eyesight is terrible, but I can hear someone's squeaky brakes from three streets over and everyone in my family thinks I'm crazy.

I love how far this game has come, and ive only played 400 hours

Btw - I've been wondering... Can you listen to the radio when deaf?😅

I've been playing a local multiplayer with some friends in which I took hard of hearing. It seems almost every meta event that happens I have no clue about (gunshots, hele event, etc) but notified by my friends. I am guessing this is what the tool tip "reduced perception radius" is actually referring to.

With deaf chosen you can still hear the weather!

the only downside for hard of hearing to me is getting used to the muffled sounds but after a bit i dont even notice it

ive got fairly good hearing (as in i can pick sounds up out of a bunch of noise very easily, not anything about my actual hearing being better, i actually have very messed up ears) and loud noises stress me out and make me panic very easily irl so hard of hearing is just a given for me, literally no downsides because the back perception radius is pretty big (as stated in the video, as big as the default radius, although i didnt know this before watching) so thats no concern and the decreased volume helps me focus more and concentrate on sound easier without being overwhelmed by loud noise, so it actually have good effects for me

Hard of hearing and deaf might be more viable playing with friends. I’m playing a custom server with some friends of mine and my current character has hard of hearing and I’m actually feeling really immersed with how my character actually feels unique whenever a car alarm goes off in the distance and I can’t hear it in game. I took the trait because all the people I play with are really loud in discord so I figured I wasn’t loosing much. I might take a deaf character next time.

I tried deaf (with the blind mod beacuse i thought it would be funny) and was shocked that you could still see zombies behind you, it wasn't that bad but not having any sounds will eventually kill you. Hard of hearing would be free points if it wasn't beacuse of the annoying muffled sound Keen hearing is a mixed bag for me beacuse I do love the increased vision but 6 points are NOT cheap Don't worry about the current trait meta if you're a new player though, build 42 is most likely going to change everything

How do the hearing traits affect zombie break-ins while sleeping?

@Retanaru hello I have stopped using this perk since this video however I've noticed when I have time sped up zombies seem to be much closer before the pace returns to normal, would you do another test and see if the different hearing abilities return the game's normal speed from X5 speed at different distances based on hearing ability? Or am I crazy.

I always play deaf can’t hear much anyway, this is the best game I ever played

The game has such a fantastic, ASMR quality of sound, that the biggest negative to taking deaf is the irl inability to hear how gorgeous it is. But on topic - I use the advanced sound mod that lets you adjust individual levels of sound. I use normal hearing, but turn zombie footsteps and moans to 200%. It's free keen hearing.

Yeah i was checking few days ago and was surprised that deaf or hard of hearing dont actually do that much. Just took it as another zomboid jank

me start the video : the subtittle/cc : *here 10 paragraph of retanaru what about to say

I've akwyas have played this game at 2-3 master volume and hard of hearing, never got surprised at all nor felt like it was a bad trait. Is also good to play deaf while multiplayer with friends

when i take traits that make it harder to hide and see, i take others that make combat easier, can usually clear out hordes with melee weapons without tiring too fast

Time to put hard of hearing now!

I've always played with hard of hearing, used my volume mixer to lower other stuff (if im listening to youtube or something else in the background) and then turn the volume up for PZ. I remember someone telling me this was stupid of me because "hard of hearing reduces your perception radius to almost nothing" lmfao

Hard of hearing also mutes some environmental sounds (as far as I can tell) and makes some sounds much quieter, banging on doors etc

lol I forgot how obnoxious the normal rain volume is because ive been using hard-at-hearing for so long. I started using it cause I wouldn't hear most things when im playing music anyways. The new dynamic music is pretty ok though so I was thinking about going back but yeah no need.

i think as long as you are paying attention and have slightly decent reaction skills then hard of hearing is just free 4 points. i hardly start a run without it.

Hey, there it is.

since i remember, ive been using hard of hearing always dont think it never got me killed granted i always played with friend but, its free points basically

ya know I don’t know why i didn’t think about that till now, but people who play the game who are deaf irl just get a free 12 perks every run. based game design

im not a big fan of hard of hearing myself because it muffles regular sounds and i like the zomboid ambience a lot

That's pretty wild

tried keen hearing once , never going back

I always pick the deaf trait but sucks when I don't hear the zombie moan when I stick em with my 2 inch hard punisher.

I always take Normal or Keen as long as I'm not role-playing since it's easy to miss silhouettes of zeds at night. Yes, I can identify 99% of them. But the rest eat me. 🧟‍♀

Deaf educator here. I’m hearing and I was born to hearing parents but I’ve been involved in the Deaf World for over ten years. In terms of realism, this isn’t that far off. Deaf people tend to have three advantages over hearing people. Firstly, they think in 3D. This is because sign language uses 3D space and thus it’s much easier to communicate and conceptualize height, width, and depth. This doesn’t really have any direct consequences that can be seen in gameplay, I just think it’s cool. The second advantage is that they’re much better at perceiving movement. There’s a common expression that says hearing people are led by their ears and deaf people are led by their eyes. They’re much more likely to notice small movements before a hearing person would and more easily pick up on movement in their peripheral vision. They generally just have more situational awareness than we do. One of my sign language professors once said he thinks it’s cause hearing makes us lazy, we can passively listen to our environment while doing something else. You can tell someone’s deaf usually because they’re actually having to pay attention to what’s going on around them. Lastly, the third advantage is that they’re often better at feeling vibrations than we are. To me, this is kind of like how blind people can feel differences in texture better than sighted people. When we, say, use toilet paper, we’re given visual feedback so we don’t notice the difference in feel when we’re done. It’s the same with vibrations. Someone might stomp their foot and as hearing people, we can hear the sound so our brains ignore the vibration it causes in the ground. Deaf people don’t have that sound to rely on, so they are aware of that vibration. It’s the same with someone talking. If someones voice is loud enough, you can feel it in your chest. So one possible reason that the radius doesn’t change, besides lazy devs, is that the Deaf character can feel the zombie behind them, either by feeling their footsteps or perhaps even feeling it’s moaning in their chest.

People who are deaf in real life making deaf characters, made for swag.

I listen to podcasts or documentaries while playing most games, so deaf isnt a penalty. The only downside is alarms (only bad before power goes out), and lack of radio.

I'm actually hard of hearing IRL, so taking hard of hearing might make it difficult to hear anything at all.. Meaning I can't make as much use of the trait as other people. People will probably tell me to raise the volume, but I don't like messing with the settings.. I like to play with them on default. And even if I did raise the volume, I don't live alone. So while it would sound normal for me, it will sound loud for everyone else in the house.. I don't use headphones, as they make me uncomfortable, and a doctor said that thry might be a cause of my hard of hearing.

Has anyone tried taking Fear of Blood, after having turned blood off in the settings? I don't imagine it'll do anything but I've not tried it so IDK!? >XD

Haven't even tested the hearing but then again I tend to spawn in rosewood and go for axe perk I find myself moving around checking my six constantly so honestly I probably wouldnt even notice the changes deaf is really free 12 points so guess il be taking that.

You gotta think too that people that are deaf or hard of hearing may still be very perceptive to make up for the lack of a sense. Feeling vibrations, better vision and smell etc

Would love a video on claustrophobic, super confused on how it works

this will be another video that the dev team will make note for B42 lol

Ive always played with deaf and assumed the perpection radius was massive for non-deaf players lmao

I have pretty good hearing irl, so i’m used to relying on sound for tracking, silence in games makes me uneasy

So is this another trait that got broken in some update long ago and never got fixed? Feels like it would be interesting to check the current state of all traits to see if they truly work as intended.

So tldr. If you are deaf irl. Either take deaf (no changes to perception radius) or keen hearing to see more.

I always took hard hearing because i play on a very low volume

Deaf is only really worrying for the helicopter event and the occasional scream/gunshot in the distance that can be hard or impossible to hear as a deaf person. Being caught out in the open during a mass migration is never pleasant, especially in the early game or when you're tired from loot running.

Being deaf irl is just free trait points lol

I think it's kind of funny that playing with the deaf trait ... literally doesn't change the game at all if you're deaf. If anything, I guess it would just buy you points to make up for the lack of sound in other ways. It almost feels more like an accessibility option without actually being intended to be one.

I simply claim that the other senses are strengthened by being deaf, which means that the field of vision to the rear is better :P

ohhhhhhhhh, i thought hard of hearing just made game audio less loud, so i thought it was free points

If you think about it, deaf peoples other senses get better to make up for the loss of hearing

honestly imo the perception should scale with the traits, making the good ones more valuable, with the negative ones actually pretty negative, even if deaf were to be balanced different, like as an example a massive black fog of war behind your character, but you can still perceive zombies normally due to detecting vibration that a deaf person could perceive as a person?