A general guide on forest survival, covering basic necessities and the foraging system.
Intro
Surviving nature in Project Zomboid is almost a game on it’s own, free of zombies and looting. I recommend this video by Ambigous Amphibian who plays the game entirely in nature. The video uses the old foraging system, but still has some relevant info. It’s actually so good that it is the main reason I bought this game. In any case, the next section will cover traits and useful skills.
Traits and Skills
If you are intending on doing a nature only run traits and occupations are essential. In a normal run nature skills aren’t as important, but some of this knowledge may still be useful.
Park Ranger and Lumberjack are the occupations you should focus on in a nature-only setting. Park Ranger lets you move faster through dense trees and adds +2 to the essential foraging skill, as well as a neat bonus to carpentry, trapping and axe. Lumberjack is a popular choice for normal runs as well, giving the axe man trait, strength and a lesser tree movement bonus. Besides these you could look at Fisherman or Farmer, but neither of those are as useful.
Here you will see all the foraging-centric traits. Cat’s Eyes is useful at night, Outdoorsman is essential for nature-only runs, Former Scout is OK for the skills, Herbalist is essential unless you want to look for the rarest magazine ever and Hiker is mediocre for the heavy cost and trivial trapping skill. To elaborate, outdoorsman is so that you don’t take heavy hits from unstable weather and herbalist gives you the contents of The Herbalist magazine which is exceedingly rare to find foraging. The Herbalist lets you forage medicinal plants which are sometimes good food sources and will replace all the medicine in the game. Every medicine except sleeping pills has it’s own equivalent plant.
Besides these Low Thirst is extremely useful since clean water is such a rare resource, strength and athletic skills could be useful, Wakeful is two-sided and perception skills like Keen Hearing and Eagle Eyed help massively with foraging radius. To elaborate, wakeful can keep you from getting extremely tired and being able to sleep on the floor while giving you the ability to forage further into the night for certain loot that is easier to find then.
This was a heavy read, so let’s go into something less monotonous. Wait, did I say less? I meant more.
Foraging
Foraging is considered boring by a lot of players, and many see it as a downgrade from the old system where you would just press a button and summon loot from thin air. In any case, it’s still essential for many challenge runs and very useful if you live near nature.
The foraging system is simple on the surface: right click and select investigate area or click the magnifying glass icon on the left. Then, from the menu that pops up, select a focus (or none) and click to start foraging. The small bubble around that isn’t greyed out you is your search radius, you can see what plays into it’s size if you hover over the eye icon in the foraging menu. This also shows what you are likely to find, affected by traits and occupations. More on this in the wiki. In case you didn’t know, the accessibility settings let you change some of the saturation effects while in search mode which may help see zombies trying to sneak up on you easier.
As for some useful tips, the foraging menu can be used as a rough clock by following the position of the sun/moon. Where you are has an effect on what you find, urban areas have more trash and such while fields could harbor crops. There are a lot of things you can find by foraging. I myself have found half-full propane tanks, Engineering magazines and .308 rounds. If the wiki is to be believed then you could even find nails, saws and hammers despite popular belief. I’m fairly certain I’ve found saws before, but I can’t confirm it.
Food
Food is important, you won’t get very far without it. Luckily food shouldn’t be one of your worries in the forest. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that most of the foods are low-calorie and you might go substantually down in weight.
The first food source is naturally foraging. You’ll find berries, fruits, spices, mushrooms and even bugs. Be advised, though, that without the herbalist trait or having read The Herbalist you can’t confirm mushrooms or berries not to be poisonous. They will kill you in minutes if you aren’t careful. According to the wiki most berries are randomly poisonous or not, and those that aren’t poisonous will never be poisonous and vice versa. The wiki also lists some berries that are supposedly always safe, images below.
This one is always poisonous:
As for mushrooms; none are always safe and none ar always poisonous. They are more dangerous when they’re poisonous, and also more likely to be poisonous in the first place.
You can always trust wild herbs, veggies, fruits and other plants. Just be advised that some herbs and plants will say -20 happines and +20 boredom because your character thinks that one in specific is a bit icky or something, so don’t eat those. They’re not dangerous otherwise.
Bugs and dead animals (at higher levels) can be found, but be advised that the tooltip says they’re dangerous uncooked and I would trust that. Even cooked bugs will always reduce happiness and increase boredom.
I would like to mention junk food as it’s called in the wiki, and while it’s possible to find foraging it’s way too unrealiable of a food source to live off.
Fishing is another way to get good food. Fish obviously need to be cooked just like bugs and animals, so you will need a campfire. While I’m fairly certain you could make a proper fishing rod if you forage up angler USA vol.1, the easiest way to fish is with a spear. I don’t have much experience with fishing, but from what I know it’s good food and you can sometimes fish up socks and boots.
Trapping is more of a lategame food source if you’re playing forest only. They make your food passively, and are a good investment. According to the wiki you can forage entire traps, and I can confirm you are able to forage trapping magazines to make them yourself if that doesn’t work. Just place the traps and dead animals will somehow teleport in after a while. Again these need to be cooked.
Lastly is farming. You can forage crops (it gives you both seeds and crops) and dig furrows with your hands. From there normal farming mechanics take over. This is usually the best option, even better than trapping. You can water with tainted water so if you’re by the ocean this should be no problem. If the wiki is to be believed you could forage up some trowels and make his a breeze.
Water
Water is urgent, from the moment you start a forest only run it will be a ticking time bomb. If you’re packing for a camping trip make sure to bring something metal to have water in (don’t drop your bottles, bring lots of those too!).
The early game way to get water is the way AA does it in the video I mentioned at the start. Just drink tainted water from a water source and eat lemongrass. If you don’t have a water source you can eat some plants and berries that have water content in them or do rain dances and pray for help from the sky lords above. For me this still worked in newer versions of the game, I can confirm. This isn’t very reliable though, and I would still take AA’s advice and not drink from tainted water bottles.
The next way to get water is to cook it over a campfire. Firewood is much more reliable than lemongrass. Be advised that you can’t do this with water bottles, they don’t melt or anything it just doesn’t work. You need a proper water container like a saucepan or cooking pot.
The endgame way to get water is water collectors, just like you would in a normal game. Sadly you can’t really plumb them as far as I know, so you’ll have to contend with boiling it. If someone has the patience to try, maybe plumb a water collector into another water collector and see if that works.
Buildings, Campfires and Tools!
Congrats, made it to the last part. Now we’ll talk about some of the stuff you’ll be crafting. Of course we’ve talked a lot about that campfire you would need to purify water and cook food, so I’ll tell you how to make that and more.
The first thing you should be making is an axe. If you’re not sure how to make that either watch AA’s video or open the archaic crafting menu on the right. You’ll need a branch and sharp stone, easy enough to forage. Then you will need ripped sheets, which you can either make from your own clothes, a nearby zombie’s clothes or if you really want to make this hard for yourself you can fish for socks to rip. You might need more than one axe to chop a tree because it’s so brittle, so have some extra on hand. You’ll need even more logs for fuel as well.
Once you have the logs from a tree, some branches and twigs and rags/ripped sheets you should be able to make a campfire kit. If I missed something and you can’t make it with what I listed, again, check the crafting menu. The campfire needs to be filled with tinder (twigs, branches, ripped sheets etc.) and fuel (You can just use tinder, but the fire won’t last long, so add some logs or planks).
You will need something to start the fire with. A notched wooden plank should cover for us. How do you make one? chipped stone and log. Can’t use it? You’ll need a branch or sturdy stick. Still doesn’t work? you can’t do it while exhausted, rest up. STILL doesn’t work? Go read the wiki. I can’t help you, sadly.
Now for fishing. Chipped stone and branch. Boom. Basic fishing gear. If you want to do any better, then find a fishing rod or read angler USA vol.1. Again, forage for magazines. Anything but the herbalist is easy enough a find that you’ll be able to find it within the next.. 300 hours of game-time?
Lastly, for buildings. All the playthrough folks settle for log walls. Those are just a few logs and ripped sheets easily found through the crafting menu. You can do better than them, right? You can make hammers with a normal stone, ripped sheets and branch. Saws and nails are painful to forage for if at all even possible, so a lot of people opt for a mod that lets you craft nails. Extra lazy? Craft your saws too. From here sky’s the limit, or something.
