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July 22, 2012

#2: Going Native

As much as you may enjoy the amenities of life, the electricity, the refrigerated beverages, the cable television and the completely unthrottled internet during peak times due to everyone else shambling down the street, eventually, the towns are going to get too dangerous for you to stay. Eventually you’re going to have to grow a beard, stop showering and turn into Ye Olde Man O’the Woods.

Luckily Modding of the Damned is here to accelerate your degeneration, throwing you down the escalator of society until you’re broken in a primal mess on the floor. Read on, and I’ll show you how to survive in the wilderness with nothing but an internet connection and a few choice clicks of your mouse.

Once you leave the safety of your inceasingly overrun home, you’re going to need a replacement. The thing about woods is that while there is the odd log cabin, they’re not exactly in massive supply, so you’re going to have to get in touch with your childhood self and take up camping once again. RobertJohnson and Thuztor have your back, however, with their Campfire mod.


Before I even tell you about it, quickly back up your media/lots/suburbs1.lot file, because the mod will replace it, due to the nature of how it works. Then, just download it from here, extract the files into your Project Zomboid folder and start the game up.

You’ll notice a few additions to the default map; mostly in the park, there are now stones littered around, able to be picked up, crafted with wooden planks and some kindling (sheets, bandages or *shudder* books), you’ve got yourself a campfire. A few millenia since we founded civilisation, you’ve now achieved the Prometheus-like feat of cultivating flame. Congratulations.

More importantly, harvesting some wooden sticks from planks, some pegs from crates and some sheets from.. beds? Cupboards? You can make yourself a tent, which will give you somewhere to sleep out in the wilderness. Find somewhere secluded with lots of sightlines, and once someone makes a hunting mod you can survive indefinitely.

So you’ve got your little tent, a campfire to keep wild coyotes away, and a beard that goes halfway down your chest. You’ve become wizened, grizzled and weathered, and you want something a little more meaty to plunge your teeth into. That’s where Project Reality, made by a pretty big team but headed up by Aregon16, comes in. In the long run it’s aiming to add all sorts from animals to cars to new professions, but right now it’s starting off by just fiddling with the backend so that they’ve got a good base to work off.

So there’s a less drastic weight system, a few more professions (civilians, raiders, mechanics) and some more profession-specific starter equipment. They’ve also inserted a few mods by other modders like the Repair mod by Xe[N]o, and the Hardcore mod by MiddleAgedbob. With these changes, and what they’ve got planned in the future, it’ll be enough to curl your beard hairs into peculiar shapes.

Which is probably what your mind is doing by about this point. The complete lack of social interaction is enough to fray anyone’s ends, but throwing yourself into the woods to live off the delicious arterial blood of rats was probably a step too far. But it’s ok, with all that insanity comes an obsessive nature, which is why Project Zomboid Stats is such a good fit for you. It’s made by peanuts (the person, not the legume), and keeps a track of pretty much anything quantifiable in the world of Project Zomboid.

How long you’ve slept. How long you’ve been alive. How far you’ve walked. How many times you’ve eaten beans, and how many times you’ve had a bean related fart (think that’s on the to do list). How many times you’ve swung a baseball bat, and how many zombie-head home-runs you’ve scored. How many kills. How many faces of those loved ones you’ve lost hover around your head everytime you find some booze and lose yourself to it for a night. How many days before the last grip on your sanity slips away.

But it’s ok, man. You’ve got a tent.

Modding of the Damned is a mod column written by Phill Cameron, a freelance journalist who has written for the likes of Eurogamer, Edge, Rock Paper Shotgun and PCGamesN, and who once thought he met a zombie, but then he realised he was just in Newcastle high street at 3am in the morning. You can find him on Twitter here.

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#1- The Good Life

Modding | 20 June 2012

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#3: Sharp Dressed Survivor

Modding | 18 October 2012
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