Rolling down your window allows you to see farther out by right clicking and dragging the mouse! For anyone who doesn't know :)

So I’m sure other people might’ve said this, but you don’t actually have to hold Z/V, simply tap them to bring up the appropriate menus. If outside the vehicle, you must be close and facing the car for tapping the button to work, also, must be in the green box for the door to be able to smash the window by tapping V. Additionally, the car keys may be in the door lock. The only way to know is to check all the doors if the car is locked. If one door lets you in when the others don’t, the key was in the handle and now it should be in your inventory. If the doors are all unlocked, lock them from inside and then try every door

In addition to what you described its also good to know about the Car Zone VHS tapes for raising Mechanics skill

If you take Sunday Driver trait, it will not only inherently slow down your driving speed, but, handling/performance is drastically decreased as well. Top it off, Sunday Driver also increases the sound output of a vehicle that you are operating as opposed to how it would be without the trait.

Something I’ve learned as a new player: if you have the key and the cars not working, check to make sure the key isn’t in your backpack. This cost multiple “survivors”

Tip: Instead of clicking the key to shut of the engine and take out the key just press the N key. Saves you some mousemovement and specialy when you have to move quickly to get out. When looking for a key on the ground they are sometimes hard to spot. Activate foraging and look around, if there is a key it will pop up. Handy for those key's that spawn behind obstacles. No mod needed.

A few additions to how to level mechanics: Skill gains are repeatable with 24 hour cooldown. So if you want to level up your mechanics in the comfort of your base you don't need to bring 20 cars into your base. You can only bring one and then repeat the described process once a day for 20 days. Or better still - since the cooldown affect the part, not the vehicle, you can get one car into your base. Then go get lightbulbs from a bunch other cars and then bring lightbulbs to your base and spend a day installing/uninstalling those bulbs into your one car. The best way to ensure you only use each bulb once is to drop them all on thd floor in front of the car and thdn in the mechanics UI when selecting which bulb to install - pick the bottom one. All uninstalled bulbs go to your inventory rather than on the ground and parts from your inventory are shown at the top of list so bottom one is going to be from the ground - not yet used. Another good way to powerlevel your mechanics skill to 2 is - get a soprts car, lug wrench, Jack and normal wrench. Go to a wheel. Remove it and then try removing the brakes. If your skill is below required you can still try uninstall ING the part. You will damage it if you fail, but every attempt - including failed - will yield you some XP. And with sports car if your skill is below 2 the chance to succeed at removing brakes is 0% meaning you can just keep trying and failing until you get level 2. Which is all you need to hotwire anyway. And final price of information. Even if you have appropriate level to remove a part, there is still a chance to damage it slightly whdn removing. To eliminate this chance you need to increase your mechanics level to 7.

When you toll down your window you can also use melee weapons. And this also kind of eliminates the wind up and recover animations from your swings so you can whack zombies with a heavy weapon a lot faster than you would normally. Like crowbar, fireaxe and maybe even a sledgehammer are good picks for vehicular melee... Also just plowing into zombies trunk-first is not ideal. The most reliable way to smack zombies with a car is going full reverse while also holding turn arrow. This way you smack zombies with your side and this seems to not kill your inertia too much.

X to doubt on surviving for 115 years and killing 2 million zombies, but if truth I wonder how long it took

In the sandbox menu you can make it so the camera pans ahead as you speed up giving a further view ahead. If you empty a fuel tank, you can remove it and repair it with metal sheets (torch + mask) in fact many parts like hood are easily repaired with metal sheets. Amateur Electrician is the best mod, gives one lvl elec, with amateur mechanic you are 1 lvl mech away from hotwire. You can also put a bag that weighs over the seat limit in a seat, or even a generator. Also if you park with your door right up against a wall you can sleep in your car pretty safely w/o zombies reaching your window.

@3:21 Yes, and you can still enjoy the not so funny bug that base game cars have no door animations and sometimes the door is stuck open but you don't know it and be surprised by a zombie feasting on you. 🤫

Zombies could chomp through a hole in the windshield. Learned that the hard way

I just learned today that vehicle weight effects milage so you can strip vehicles to their bare skeleton to get more milage out of it I have 400 hours in the game and i just learned that today

You can also fish out the open window of a vehicle.

Another tip, if you have a lot of car keys collected and don't know which is your current car, just exit the car while it's running, place your keys in a bag temporarily, and turn off your ignition, this is helpful in multiplayer to lend a key to a friend

My favorite vehicle mod is RV Interior. At times you can abuse its mechanics, but it is a super fun play style to drive around Knox county with a mobile base of sorts. It supports placing furniture inside the vehicles. For example, in my run, I outfitted a box van with a bed, mini fridge, and shelving, so that I could leave my base for days on end during extended looting runs to distant towns.

when pressing z and the interface shows up, you can actually press the numbers on your keyboard instead of clicking on it with your mouse. You can also hold down shift when using the z interface as a shortcut to exit from the corresponding seat number. Great job on covering this vehicle guide btw!

I'm brand new to this game (maybe 20 hours or so?) and I didn't know most of this. On my fourth new game, I spawned in a house that had a pristine SUV with a 60% of its gas in it and a key on the ground. Realized I had no idea what to do with this superpower. Thanks for the video!

I'd like to clear up a common misconception about running over zombies in cars: - Driving forward will first off damage your hood, then once the hood is damage sufficiently it'll damage the engine, making it likely to stall out. - Driving backwards will first off damage your trunk, reducing the carry capacity of the vehicle, then once the trunk is sufficiently damaged your gas tank will take damage, reducing max fuel capacity AND making it likely to stall out AND leak gas. The difference is that, from my (very brief and quick) testing, a 100% trunk will degrade around 50-70% slower than a 100% hood; but don't think you can always drive over zombies backwards and you'll be safe, because you won't. This is easy to replicate and test as well, so, look for yourself.

It's also possible to find a key by Foraging skill in the search mode.

Ever had a car with 100 engine that kept dying? if you select the engine module one of the values that is displayed on the top of the vehicle interface is engine quality it is a random number that determines engine performance regardless of condition. Really important if you use the worse vehicle condition mod

I have been trying to figure out how trailers work forever! Thank you!

Awesome guide didn't know how to access car options until this video thanks

If there is a car parked outside a house or like in the driveway, you can get the key by luring zombies into the house and killing them there. There's a chance they will drop the key. If playing single player, always leave the key in the ignition. If you store things on seats, you won't be able to sit in that seat or enter from that door until you remove the items.

I only JUST started practicing learning how to fix them/lvl mechanics, it already seems so in-depth (as most things are in this game)

A new thing I learned the other week...sometimes car keys are found in the ignition already, so don't forget to try to start any car you enter just to find out

All the gas tanks are on the drivers' side. And I have noticed you can bash out the ceiling at gas pumps to get more vison so you don't get jumped as easily.

You can get exp from each of the three car types once every 24 hours, so try to have all three (sport, standard and heavy) around for max xp gains per day. Car is locked but don't want to smash a window to get in? Open the vehicle menu and remove a window, any window will do :D (Just place it back once you unlocked it...) Depending on the version of the game, you might be able to set a cruise control speed and instantly go that speed from stopped. Great for towing, plowing through hordes or getting out of a muddy field. Just be careful where you aim the car... don't want to end up on the wrong side of a death screen :P

Car seats can take more than their weight capacity if you place only 1 item in it. So you can use large backpacks to maximize storage. With organized it lets you store even more. place heavy items in the seats and fill the trunk with loose items for those long hauls. And when towing, the gear you are in will affect torque. Use the cruise control to keep it slow enough to stay in 1st or 2nd depending on how much power the car/truck has. If you hook up to the front of the vehicle you can use the reverse gear to always stay in "1st" . Going into higher gears can slow you down, turning and grass will also slow you down making it possible to get stuck. Loud engines and mufflers also affect how far zombies can detect i think. So small cars are more stealthy. Another good tactic is to reverse and do circles to run over zombies. It will mostly damage the side panels. This can be good for clearing small hoards while you are too tired to fight. I also heard that sleeping in the back seat acts as a bed, so you could avoid the neck pain if thats true(also someone on the reddit said that having a pillow in ur inventory while sleeping can help that too. I have not tested either tho) Lastly any car with a siren can be used to gather large hoards if you dont mind losing the car (and battery) for a while. Place it near where you want to clear, turn it on, and run away. The siren will Go until the battery dies. Last last thing. Seats that have items in them are not able to be sat in/crossed over. If you think you might have to bail keep a seat on the passenger side clear so you dont have to f with it in a bad situation Last last last thing. When you get into a car, wait a second until you hear the doot closing noise. If you move before the door closes it stays open and lets zombies bite you like when the window is broken. This does not show up on the car but trust me on this one. Last×100 thing: if you are speeding down a road and have to choose between hitting a car or a tree/pole/house hit the car.

It'd be a nice idea to explain to new players the difference in engine quality versus engine condition.

Love the video! Informative, to the point, good bgm and edits while keeping them non-intrusive, 5/5 thanks for all the info man!

For me, somewhere along the line, PZ turned into a car mechanic simulator. My days are spent making spiked bumpers and looting metal.

Super informative - thanks, Kendrick!

I think you can put stuff on your seats. Never used it but saw it somewhere. A nice addition to the trunk space.

Great video. Just subscribed. Can’t wait for more !

You don’t need to hold v just press it

Good content, clear and interesting. Never knew about the Z key. Thats gunna save me alot of problems.

Law and Order will be coming for you... No one escape...

for early mechanic training just get bunch of lightbulb and swap the light bulb, but each lightbulb can only gain exp once for each car every 24h

This is really helpful - I wasn't completely clear on how skill progression worked, and I wanted to be able to repair my police truck.

I want to see an iceberg video now seeing that at the start for PZ, lol

Nice video. This was very informative! wish you the best.

The best car mods imo is Vanilla Vehicle Enhancer, Filibuster Rhymes Used Cars, Autosaur Trailers, and Small Town First Responders. Maybe The Motorious Zone if thats still not enough vehicles for you. The super detailed and armored cars ARE VERY COOL and exceptionally well made, but they clash too much with the games style for me to like them.

220ish hours and I didn't know about people to press V while outside of the car and rolling down window to shoot. Thanks!

Great work, this was helpful and concise!

not much of a tip but if you're playing multiplayer and have several cars, it's good to rename each key with the car description (like red pickup, or fire truck). makes sharing cars with friends a lot easier

Good video, I like the chill vibe

Hey man you did an awesome job with this video.

you can just press Z once you don't need to hold z. just incase this helps you in tight situations.

What I've observed is that hotwired cars burn through battery charge faster but I'm not too sure

4:17 i once had a key spawn in the car door i went into the car then locked the doors then went out on each door and got the key to the car

High Qulaity 👌 New subscription

excellent info. def learned a few things. thanks!

Why doesn't anyone talk about having an axe equipped and choosing the "cut down tree option" to see the tree trunks while driving? I'm a noob but this technique really helps me on those forest trails.

I started playing Zomboid a week ago, when my homies convinced me to get it. I was watching other people's content on it before that point, so I was somewhat curious about the game to begin with 😅 I am trying to find information, on how does replacing/fixing doors and windows work in this game, so I'm watching all of the vehicle guides I can find before next weekend Do you have to find a model-specific part in order to replace it? ? I've heard that there are "Common", Commercial and Performance classes of vehicles, so do you have to match the part by class? If you know the answer, it would be greatly appreciated 😊 P.S. I love your video structure and delivery, amazing work dude

great video bro

You can hold right click to look around while in a car

Man now I want some modding options for cars 🤔

Someone needs to make a jump pack/jumper cable mod

Get to lvl 3 metalworking. Keep your trunk healthy.

I wanna know how long I would have played before I tried a drive by without someone telling me it was possible. Probably never would have thought of it.

I remember seeing somewhere that TIS disabled the ability to headlight grind your mechanics.

phenomenal. cheers!

I can’t find a good video on project zomboid iceberg chart you should make one

Gl with KZfaq grind.

Hey mate, do you think you could share where you found that image of the iceberg for the game?

5:38 went to my local books store but the lady said "wtf is project zomboid" and "get outta here, nerd" :(

If you could since you mentioned mlds, i think there is a huge lack of tutorials about the vehicle modifications/tuning in the autostar mods, and a general lack of informatiom on what each upgrade does exactly so you might want to be the one to cover theese mods in detail

Couldn't get Rain Wash to work for the life of me

F is the hot key for turning car lights on and off

Does anyone know the name of the mod on top left? the one with the stats.

Nice video! How many hours do you have on PZ?

i am not sure about this one you get i higher sleeping quality in the back of a car because the seats are connected

Assumeing you don't skip days in game 115 years of progress is 40,940 hours irl

115 years wtf

Im not even going to lie, I downloaded 130 mods that are cars or car themed lol

Am I able to add these mods to an existing play though I have going?

What's the mod that u have a body status bottom left on ur screen when u get damage?

Left upper side, whats that for a hud u r using? Name?

is there a video on this iceberg? 0:03

I must not be doing Zomboid car right because when I have car keys in hand and press V the start car option doesn't come up, it may be that i don't have the right car keys but kwho tf knows lol 😂

whats the mod in the top left for your stats

How do you get td see the cars like in 6:14

At 3:29, you have the hood up on your car. Is that a mod?

how do you armor the cars

why do you lag when you speak?

The waffle house has found it's new host

couldnt get thru 10 secs of this video for excessive mouth noises...

Thank for the video. Very informative. I have a question, though, not dealing with the subject of the video. What mod are you using to get that sweet metric on the upper left at 3:06 along with the damage indicator above the zombies, also at the same time frame? I want them! Thanks in advance!

bro i feel like VHS tapes are not known enough in this game, if you read a mechanic 1 book before watching 3 carzone VHS tapes you can get to lvl2 mechanic in matter of minutes.