I think the reason that nearly every home still has food and supplies inside is that basically everyone (except the player) weren't immune to the airborne variant of the virus, instead of just the fluid transmission from being bitten or scratched. They never really had a chance to pack up and run like you said. They just got infected straight away and died before they could do anything. That's the reason that I see it as, but the fact that every home in vanilla gameplay is abandoned without any sign of being touched likely has to go along with that fact. This is all just my own recollection from the wiki and other bits of trivia about the game so I could be wrong in any case.

I'm currently in my longest run I've ever survived seeing winter for the first time thanks to farming and foraging where I rarely go on fishing trips since I have to drive for hours to get to the nearest river. Sure scavenging towns gives you an abundance of food but it comes at the constant risk of being bitten and losing your entire run. I can sustainably live for months without ever leaving the little farmhouse I've set up in and there's no zombies for miles so I can forage the nearby forest without any worry. The only thing I have to leave for is gas and scrap electronics every other month to keep my generator going so I don't have to deal with produce rotting and the tension of those trips is so much higher now due to it not being an everyday occurrence. As a result I feel like I'm way more careful because of it and don't take the unnecessary risks I used to take when I'd get numb to the danger from running through hordes of zombies on a daily basis and inevitably getting bit because I'm not taking it seriously anymore. Maybe it's just me but I feel like I just play better when scavenging is something thats only done for the bare necessities instead of for a constant need for food, and sure it might be mundane to do nothing but make meals and forage day after day but I'm enjoying progressing beyond just playing the same couple months over and over again for a change.

Farm/Fishing is essential in late-game worlds with rare loot.

i go on rarest settings and use mods that make food loot even more rare(like 75% ridiculously rare loot or something). so farming and fishing does help a lot.

I do farm but mostly because I like to cook and use fresh food instead of cans. And you said food is abundend. yeah it is, but I generally dont eat things like sugar, honey or like peanut butter because I like to cook with those and dont eat them as is. Also a lot of food is bad. Like little to no calories and stuff or like 400 fat (like lard) so yeah. I find the balance just perfect. Also there is enough food but if you are a loot goblin and grab everything eventually it will run out. I like to move bases and I often stock up on way to many cans etc etc and never use them. Farming is very easy to set up and its like almost free food. I generally dont fish because I rarely live near water and I dont really gather fishing supplies to go fishing. Foraging is fun but at high levels you only really get good food items. At the lower levels you only get sticks and stones and its like from lvl 6+ you start to find interesting stuff reguarly. I have trapped once. I have tried many times but I just forget my traps, then like 2 weeks later I am like oh yeah I placed some traps...

I farm and fish, and you did your data wrong. The combined number of people who fish, farm, or do both is OVER 50%. EDIT: You must not live long enough to die from nutrition deficits, either. You can only forage for berries for so many days before you begin to lose weight, and you will eventually die because of this. With Ice Cream becoming rotten now, and only butter and cereal surviving to the late game as nutrition sources, farming and fishing are incredibly important for any playthrough that lasts over a month. I'm looking forward to the farming and fishing changes, as these tasks will now become real challenges for people who want to live for over a year.

It’s a cool idea but people get bored of the game before the food runs out.

fish fear me

I don't fish or farm, but once b42 comes out, I'll start checking it out. I will for sure try to do a complete wilderness survival gameplay with my brother as we have played zomboid for about a year now. I have currecntly 1,1k hours on the game and have never even touched fishing or farming, I don't know why either, but zomboid feels so dead to me sometimes. Even when I play with my brother, it feels so dead because its either you and a couple of friends + the zomboids, or its only you and the dead. Animals will bring some fun into it and it might motivate me to start fishing, farming and hunting all at once since these are all things you can do pretty easily instead of having to scavenge for supplies everywhere.

I feel it’s something I see in most play throughs and enjoy, but I don’t think I ever really do myself.

See I only farm because the more experienced players have told me I need to before the winter but tbh it seems to me you just need to go find canned goods in towns you haven’t completely looted yet and you’ll be good. I play single player so I’m sure it’s different for big servers where people horde food however farming and fishing do seem kinda useless if you just play by yourself Great video! I love your channel

Fishing is actually quite amazing in the endgame, food will eventually run out but fishing is quite sustainable. You can store fish for a couple of days but even then, you can catch a single fish, slice it up, and have meals for several days.

On insanely rare without Louisville there's still probably like 2 years worth of canned food. Almost no point in farming when fishing literally nets thousands more in calories and protein in hours versus days and it's year round.

I do both farming and fishing. Never got into trapping yet.

I really suggest turning down food spawns it makes the game way more interesting, actually having to either farm or fish instead of being able to easily rely on just clearing a kitchen out and getting enough non perishablest o last as long as you need is way more fun.

Farming. Foarfing n fishing is well over worth it but only if there's no food The problem is that FOOD IS ABUNDANT ASF

Over 1000 hours in and farming has always been my main source of food. I like the routine and it also makes for a nice looking base. I only use canned food when waiting to start a farming rotation at a new location.

I play about 90% of my time on multiplayer. I didn't farm or fish until I hit about 900 hours in the game. Now I consider both essential, especially fishing. I wont base away from a fishing source anymore. I can do trapping too, but that feels redundant with fishing. But the server I played on had a delayed loot respawn so preserved food really did run out.

I play in late multiplayer server, being able to find fishing rod is the luckiest person among 70% of the server already since most people die of starvation before they can fish.

I farm and fish simply because i like it. It even feels more rewarding to eat a meal made from fish you ve caught and crops you ve grown. It ads to the experience

I feel fishing and farming are key aspects of incredibly long term survival. I’m talking into year 2 and 3 kind of long term. Now it should be noted that most players won’t make it to winter let alone year 3 with most games ending around month 2. Obviously scavenged food is plentiful enough that it will easily carry you through that time and then some on a single player game, but having an infinite source of food is always good. Farming and fishing, especially if you invest into those skills early will easily get you extra food you can store and eat, and it can be an easy way to subsidize loot runs letting you focus on other items when you do make excursion to untouched areas. Normally I partake in farming as a way to gain stuff for salads since I’ve found salads are a great and easy way to gain happiness. Having at least 4 ingredients (especially strawberries) and a spice if you have it can very easily get you a happiness greater than candy could ever get you, and as long as you get seeds it’s infinite.

i'm over 1500 hrs and i find it's hard enough to establish a base that i CAN farm in and have the stuff i need to do it, but i could just be horribly incompetent

I've thought the same thing. I've only ever resorted to either/both fishing and/or farming when either doing a 10 Years Later run, where almost *all* loot is set to insanely rare or if I've setup my base in a very remote area of Kentucky and only go on loot runs for essential items such as a shotgun and ammo to Kurt Cobain myself when living in the Wilderness becomes too lonely...

remember most people saying muldraugh was a bad idea for begineers? guess what, its perfect for people that like fishing and farming, there is a small lake right next to it, and there are seed packets as far as the eye can see due to how many self storage units there are, when i started playing i thought the only way i could even think of survive for long was by fishing and farming, it was my first thought. And i did that when i noticed just how fast i had to eat up the canned food, or even the non perishable food to keep my character's weight. i was dumb founded by this video when i found out people preferred riskying to be constantly house hopping for food instead of growing their food.

The need to farm and fish goes hand in hand with the settings and how long you can stay alive.

The whole premise of this video is based on the settings this guy chooses for his game. You can make loot extremely rare and turn off respawn and then farming and fishing are very valuable.

6 months later kinda fixes it. Having 1 survivor living under a rock for half a year is weird, but it does give a more apocalyptic touch

All loot on insanely rare and the 'Barricaded World' mod make the game feel 'lived in' as though the people tried to survive and failed.

When the perishables expire, I go straight for farming, because it gives you a shitload of veggies if done successfully. Trapping for me is the black sheep of skills, because no matter what, the traps don’t work, mainly because of zombie proximity, which is impossible to rectify

I was playing on project russia map while having the injured trait from more traits ig, and i couldn't patch myself again because i also had the anemic trait (yeah ik I'm stoopid), i was already giving up when i saw a glass farming house (idk the name), there was Cabbage there and that's what saved my life! I'll always be grateful for the farming feature

On our server, we play with water and electricity already turned off, 6 months after the apocalypse, with very rare canned food spawn AND in the beggining of the the winter (all perishable food is already rotten than). That makes search for food so meaningful, and farming, fishing and trapping essencial for survival in the spring and beyond.

I have 640 hours and for me farming is like an aditional feature that are doing itself passively. If you are lucky rain will water your crops, so no need to check on them. The only isssue here are deseases that can be catch by your plants. Fishing just take too much time in scale to what you gain from it, it needs rework asap. Looting is accualy not only most paying off method, but most engaging and fun too, especially when you have mods for additional cities and locations.

yeah no you're completely right, fishing and farming currently just feel like features to make challenge runs or living in the forest possible rather than a necessity, especially if you decide to loot Louisville, you'll pretty much never run out of non perishable food. this could be a challenge in itself like perishable food not having good nutrients like fresh food? punishing players who don't ration their fresh food well, but cereal and butter pretty much destroy that idea and nutrients aren't really expanded that much yet. I really don't want nutrients and farming/fishing to feel like a chore, so i think build 42 turning them into maybe fun minigames and adding some events or features that encourage players to at least think about and plan for fishing, farming trapping and hunting (my personal favorite feature I'm looking forward to). I think it would be fun to learn whatever form of food stockpiling speaks to you, like being hands on and shooting guns? foraging and hunting. like minigames and consistency? fishing and farming, and maybe trapping for supplemental food. enough rambling, i just want these extra late game activities to be fun

Growing tomatoes in the bleak winter snows is quite a dank experience ngl. 10/10 would never look for food again LOL

500 hours, aw so cute little guy. 1500 hours here, i do not just farming and fishing but also trapping and foraging. gonna be my first all max skills character 4 months survived so far, 6000 zombies killed pretty much all of them with a crowbar

Play on a coop server with very rare loot, and you need to farm to get cabbages to trap rabbits, and you need potatoes for the calories. Fishing is fine, but you can get a lot more calories passively by trapping.

In my opinion farming and especially fishing is very important. In Riverside for example you can run out of food fast if you play with very low loot. I save the cans for bad days so it is my only option to go fishing and later farming.

Fish is the easiest way to get the calories and proteins to help maintain your weight and boost the % exp for level up your strength attribute

Farm and fish is good when your already 7+ months due to food being rotten and removed from world and towns electrical cutoff

Fishing and farming are mostly useful in multiplayer where loot starts to be scarce after a while

I'm the farmer, fisherman and, overall nature players. We have that kind of server for the long haul.

Alright, hear me out, maybe people did take supplies with them, per house there's what, maybe 2, 3 days worth of food? Mostly no weapons, except kitchen ware? I remember in the 90's my parents house were fully stocked with a month's worth of food in the house. And given that houses like survivor houses, are stocked with more food and weapons, maybe that is what a house where no one took food away would look like? Anyway, I fish, trap and farm, but only to extend the use of the supplies I find, as I tend to be picky to what I bring to my base, picking only dried beans, canned beef and spaghetti bolognese, for calorie reasons.

When NPCs makes a return, i'm sure this will be addressed, like NPCs forming gangs and going out on food runs like in TWD. Also, i think most people don't live long enough to be able to fish or farm in safety.

i play years and years long playthroughs. Fishing and farming are super important.

Farming is sometimes worthy because it gives low calories food, which helps late in the game. But it is not necessary. None of them are. To make them really worthy and also necessary, the player needs to lower a lot the spawn of food. The hardest I tried was using mods that allowed me to lower the food spawn more than it was possible with vanilla settings; looting everything in Riverside gave me circa 2 fridges full of food and alcohol, and most of the food was low calories food. In that game, farming and fishing were the only reliable option for long term survival, and rationing canned food became immediately necessary because of weight controll. Here's how you make Project Zomboid a real survival game. Playing with "normal settings" without mods, resources are so abundant that you will probably reach the need to farm and fish after many in game years. In have never met someone who survived more than 2 years.

I have a save focused on survive as long as possible until build 42 releases. Farm and fishing suits my playstyle in a way that I stock food for winter and other periods that I wanna focus on more stationary tasks like exercices, base improvement and skill upgrades. It allow me to control my characters weight during these moments, but farming is too easy in this game, just plant a small garden with efficient vegetables and wait for the rain. The rest of the time I am just creating safehouses around the map and looting around those areas, getting some items is really to easy, I agree with the point that the world should be more caotic as an real apocalypse. btw I have around 774 hours in project zomboid.

Here is my thing. It's often about nutritional value. Most canned food and stuff left behind isn't all that great. Soon as the electricity goes out and no generator yet. You messed up. You're going to need fishing. I had plays that between day 1 and 30 the power was out in one week. It didn't take long all the food was done for but canned foods. With the right nutrition you might notice you melee better and aim is a bit better. Fishing is a huge boost. After a generator it's been the best play I had.

fishing and farming is important espically in late game for those that play espically fishing since its almost an infinite food source and could help you pass the winter, vegetables are hard on the other hand you could grow potatoes since they tend to last the most. As i said its important for those that aim to play for late games because after first 2 months everything its spoiled and the game become harder as you progress no matter what you get.

with some mod i see huge change in game its a small team of people I thin mod add to the game what devs would do themselves if they have money and time but I did find houses in vanilla when i first started playing that had some weapon in different places and looked like someone was there living after apocalypse had taken place. but with mod you find nomad and prepper they are called and it make a game much more interesting and helps you to find some good loot even if it just some clothing.

weight management requires both fishing and farming, maybe trapping too in winter

I do try to fish and farm but it is such a pain to gather the resources to preserve them for the winter

They're better for survival island-esque challenges, since long-term you need both fishing and farming to maintain body weight. Crops don't provide enough calories to keep your weight above 75, so eating fish from time to time will keep you from gaining the negative weight traits. It's just that the traditional playstyle zomboid incentivizes makes fishing entirely unnecessary. Even for non-nomadic players who stick to one town and one town only, the amount of non-perishable foods in that town could last a hearty-appetite character at least a year. Most players don't make it to a year, either due to quitting or dying before that point.

they're very valuable skills on ten years later settings

FIshing and farming just resolves all your survival needs, and once all that is covered life just turns boring , you are surviving but not living

Farm and fish very useful when you set all loot rarity into insane or extreme rare

I almost always farm, fish and trap. I prefer the more secluded survival style, with random high adrenaline trips into Urban areas. I set my zombie population to very high, and horde sizes to 50-100. They also respawn if the area has been unseen for a week. So.. I'm never short of Zeds to deal with.

Farming and fishing are like most of what I do. It's really nice.

I farm and fish but foraging and cooking with combinations of farmed fished, trapped and foraged ingredients is by far the most fun way to get food.

I think this is something where Ai players and settlements would make a big difference. You have several towns and a city's worth of food at your disposal as the player right now so there's no real need as long as you stock up periodically. Once there's other mouths to feed on the map that'll change. And you'd also see hoarding because of this, which will make the food scarcity even more immediate Edit: with build 42 heading towards a survival game where you don't even need zombies turned on to have fun, it does enable a survivalist playthrough. I guess the features were just a bit premature compared to what's coming?

I usually do runs that last from 30-90 days. Before getting bored and starting a new character. I do usually end up fishing but rarely farm.

I believe farming and fishing is still worth it. I never playing long term on SP but i have 1000k plus hrs on mp and half of it on a single server alone and when planting crops, it takes 12 hrs irl but its worth it because once you harvest crops you'll have a good amount to survive off of. The down side is yull have to keep them fresh or they can rot. Fishing i just started getting into after all this time, but farming is the way to go.

Fishing and farming is awesome if you live in the middle of nowhere and have no access too towns it also gives you a huge excess of food to store so you won't have to farm or fish again for a while

bruh, i dont farm or trap, but fishing is what i personally do, its pretty good and keeps you full when you catch a big fish with a simple dumb spear, also it helps you gain weight. But, most players dont really use these mechanics since there are lots of food in zomboid anyways, still though, i am glad these mechanics were added to the game, because there are people like me who use it lol. Especially for people who like to survive in the forest like me. But still you can do whatever you want, have fun with your world mate, that is what matters! have a nice day reader.

I generally do farming, fishing, foraging, and trapping in nearly every run. I do turn loot spawns down, but I don't think the game got this wrong. The default settings give you working cars everywhere, electricity and water for a long while, TV shows pumping your skills, food everywhere, etc etc. New players need that - they're not ready to take on every game mechanic simultaneously. If the game defaulted to the settings many experienced players use, I think we wouldn't get any new players anymore... In short, if you're finding food too easy, you've reached the point where it's time to turn that down.

Every single kitchen is completely stocked with food... Shows a fridge witha carton of milk, a lime and a wedge of cheese. Realsistically every house only has a couple of days worth of food in for one person, that's not really a lot.

Apocalypses gives a lot of loot so I can see why people don't fish, farm and trap.

i have in every play i did farmed and fished. I always play with low loot spawns, maybe thats why. But even if i would swim in cans, i would still farm and fish randomly i think. Oh and i play 2 styles 1 i play in the wilderness without cars just with nothing, so i need to do those to survive or i play with 8-16x zeds an then u need sometimes a whole day to clear one house. So no, i never ever felt in PZ that i have more food that i ever need.

Playing with 4 friends and I went for fisher char because i didnt want to be a zombie killing machine for 200th time. So I fished abit with spears and filled like 2 out 5 fridges full of fish, they dont even have enough time to eat it all and they kinda hate me for it (especially our cook)

I hate going through the same houses over and over again to get food, and cans annoy me, so I farm and fish. High level fishing and max speed is broken af

i never tried to use trapping but in general i just like fishing and farming in pz, cause sometimes i get too bored of looting random locations/houses/etc over and over, and i just want to have a simple food income even if it's taking long to grow 🤷

For me, farming and fishing are not about survival, they are about fun and getting into the atmosphere of survival. I am a person who loves to chill, and for me, building a house in the middle of nowhere, building traps, watering the plants in the morning, and catching fish at sunset is how I enjoy this game. It wouldn't hurt to visit some places crowded with zombies from time to time, and perhaps stay out of the house for a few days relying on some canned food, but in the end, if I survive, I will always return to fishing growing crops and making traps

I realised that you're basically pitching the 10 years later mod lol, i know it's not an exact fix to what you're saying, but it's pretty damn close.

this coul't be rebalanced with some common sense stuff. like canned having a chance to spoil if allowed to freeze, this bulges teh can and can break the seal - and would make winter the deadline for the safety of canned food and would mean winter is more of an issue.

I prefer to fish, but then again I take more of a survivalist approach rather than looter, thats not to say there isnt merit to looting food however its a mechanic i got tired of after it being my go to in other survival games, like 7 days to die, fishing/farming gives me more of a sense of accomplishment.

Farming is awesome, radio calls for rain, plant food, harvest in 2 weeks, fill freezer. Easily gain weight from cabbages and it gives you water. Take that noobs.

I get that 44% is a large chunk of people, but the 56% of people who said they did some form of farming air fishing seems to be more than ‘nobody’ as your thumbnail suggested. You could have just as easily (and more accurately) had it say “the majority of people hunt and/or fish. I’m not trying to come off as snarky here, but it just struck me a bit. Loves the video though. Great stuff.

1000 hours in, i've never based in a city

Whaaaaaaat? I'm in the minority? Every long-term playthrough I am on has farming and fishing!! I really thought it was normal, that's crazy to learn. It's because I kinda like making complex meals with variety. There's heaps of canned food, sure, but a lot of it are just ingredients. When making a soup or stew for example, you can use canned carrots if you don't have fresh carrots. The canned versions are just long term substitute ingredients. If you are straight up just using food as a hunger reducing mechanic, then yeah, there's way more than most people will ever need. But if you go through multiple cans when making a hearty stew, you do go through them pretty quickly. I think I'm in the minority because I really engage with the cooking and recipe systems in the game, and maybe that's not very common. Also, Fishing keeps up protein intake when you're out of meat. You don't need to eat fish on every meal, so I always end up freezing loads of fish and just topping up my protein levels, but there is an ideal level of protein in your system that gives you a strength xp multiplier, which coupled with exercise and zombie fighting, boosts strength really fast. There's no real need to micromanage carbs or lipids since bodyweight is primarily measured by calorie intake anyway, and there's no fitness xp boost that I know about from those other macronutrients.

Im on my longest survival and have two freezers full of veggies. Though a mod has left trapping animals impossible. So fish is my only meat

Farming foraging trapping fishing are ALL worth It when you pick fresh vegetables fill a freezer with fish and do a pie with berries its all worth it

Eventually you're just playing single player Runescape instead of a zombie survival simulator. As educational this game is about real world survival skills, it's also incredibly game-y and seems to curb realism for the sake of fun or balance.

ngl i do not think npcs are ever getting added back to the game. it's been years at this point and that seems to just be an empty promise

i love farming in PZ its always been my favorite food gather method but it alongside fishing need buffs, i dont know how to go along with it but the only viable thing to farm is cabbage but even then your better off trapping of just scavaging. indie stone pls buff

see I love this game, but little issues like this make it so boring to play alone, I wish more of my friends were willing to play bc I'm not a big fan of playing with strangers. At the end of the day, it's kinda the same problem with Minecraft, when you're trying to go solo. You gotta make up some sort of plot to keep going

farming is a good thing for long-run

if you leave it on default settings..theres WAY too much food around

Some ppl use zombie loot mods, with that just kill zomboid and u get food

In online servers there’s always shortage of food so I farm

I don’t live long enough to farm, fishing is a thing I’ve done, fresh pan fried bass with rice

I think the game also lacks any incentive to incorporate variety into your diet. In real life, the desire for a rich/varied diet would motivate you to grow vetagables even if you also had access to processed food.

i do it all. its more fun taking advantage of all the aspects of the game

More important thing to take in to consideration Most players don't live long enough to NEED to fish/farm If you think there's plenty of food it's either a 1. New character/server 2. Settings are too easy 3. A mix of both

I usually farm and trap animals like rabbits and birds

Have you tried Hay Day?

Farming is broken OP if you dedicate to it, first patch of cabbages and i have 200+

Farming and fishing is only really viable in multiplayer where everything is already taken by players

i just hit 515 hours and it cost me a beloved character but my death wasn't legit.

4 cans of food is not much for 1 home. 4 cans left feels like someone already left and packed the food with them.

So... so is it worth it? Underused, yes, not exactly necessary, yes, but is it worth it?

If you want more of a gradually lived in world there is a mod that slowly takes away items over a period of time. Can't remeber the name. I wonder if the same can be said about foraging/trapping also?