Beyond the first day

We all know how to beat down a zombie and maybe do a few crafts or two, but most characters dont survive for longer than a day,
however, if your character does survive longer than that, and you have no clue, this guide is for you!

Planning

I cannot overstate this: Plan! PLAN! PLAN!!! You are going to need having papers for everything! Plan your scavenging,
plan how to handle dangerous situations and emergencies, plan everything!

Bases and you

Unless you choose some sort of nomadic lifestyle(one way is detailed later in this guide) you will need to have a proper base.
An ideal canditate for this is an emergency shelter. Theese shelters are the ones you spawn in, and wich are scattered around the world.
First of all: They have a basement for expanded storage, you can even dig out more space with a jackhammer. Even better is the fact that it has
many exits, this makes many escape routes incase of fire/a burglar breaking and entering. Even better is that you have a lightsource, the terminal
located in the upper left corner of the shelter, it is infinite and makes the shelter a good place for nightly reading, and reading in general.
For your shelter you will need:

• A stove for cooking food and heating indoors
• A nearby water source, a nearby foodsource
• That the shelter is not too close to a city or other source of enemies capable of breaking windows
• Room for storage

A water source can either be a river, the swimming pools of a nearby mansion or funnels. Funnels make you dependent on the weather to survive, though.
Food is easy to aqquire, you will never run out of squirrels to eat, that and those pesky spiders.

The Base life

Once you got a base you will have many things to do. You need to maintain your stock of items, that means ammunition for whatever guns you keep,
non perishing food, water, etcetera. For that, you need to do expeditions in nearby towns. Towns are full of supplies, but also zombies, and zombies are dangerous
in the way that they can quickly surround you, they hunt in packs and one zombie rarely comes alone.

Planning your expedition

Before you even think of going out, you should take a moment and think. Where am i going? For what purpose? What will i need to fullfill the purpose of this expedition?
What are potential threats? What will i do to handle those potential threats? Regardless of what you are going to do, you will need some basic supplies with you.

• First aid kits, you will most likely sustain some sort of injury, do bring rags with you too, to stop any bleeding.
  Aspiring and Oxycodone can be life saving as pain can be quite crippling.
• Storage space, unless this is your first time outside and you are going specifically after backpacks, make sure you have enough
  inventory space for whatever you are looking for, a vehicle can greatly assist in this, any kind, really, even casters can be the best friend of a scavenger.
• A weapon: Unless you think you will be faster than everything out there, do keep a weapon on you, rifles are really awesome for self defense, even against NPC survivors!
• Ammunition for said weapon, if required.
• Food for the day, usually 4 pieces of cooked meat will last, 2 bottles of clean water will also make you last for a whole day,
  if possible, keep supplies incase you get stuck
• If using a vehicle, always keep a basic toolkit on it, it sucks to have your truck break down in the middle of a zombie flooded city,
  always keep a jack, a wrench, a hacksaw and a welder on you.

You dont want to loose all that loot!

When you have returned

So you finally returned with everything you needed, yes? Fine! Okay now you need to sort it. It is a good idea to sort perishable and non-perishable food in two stacks,
this way you will have an easier time eating food before it rots, keep nonperishing foods(canned, salted, etc.) for food emergencies. Do also drink other beverages than clean water
before clean water. Orange juice is tasty and rots, water is not. You will need those morale boosts.

Sort crafting materials in one stack, food in another, books in another, eg. If you really care much,
you can sort crafting materials in different stashes for different desciplines of crafting.
Personally, I have a chemistry lab, a kitchen, a wood workshop, a metal workshop and an electronics crafting bench.

Indefinite survivial requires self sustainability

A recent update addded the ability to grow plants, yes, this means you can grow weed. This also allows some pretty wicked self-sustainability
however, you cant kill all the squirrels of a forest, they are a virtually infinite source of food. keeping a river nearby is also a really good idea.
You will need to get some skills in survival and tailoring as your clothing will detoriate, cooking skill is neccesary, as it will help you create
good meals that will boost your characters morale, and you can derive painkillers and sleeping medicine from mutated poppy plants.

If you could not find all tools needed, for example a hoe, they can be crafted using metalworking.

Metalworking is a really expensive thing to start up with and will almost unavoidable require you to find and power a welder. i can reccomend building a
charcoal forge and kiln, as wood items are really easy to find, and should you ever (hah) run out of trees, animal bone can be used to make charcoal.

If you are really rigid about keeping your spot at your shelter(i can reccomend this,
self sustainability in prolonged time can be a real challenge, a different one to zombie survival, that is)
You will eventually reach a stage where you have depleted all nearby cities from supplies, everything has worn out,
Slowly you will need to replace your clothes with fur clothes, you will need to make improvised tools.
Your skills in "civillian" things will most likely degrade, the day you dont have ammunition left for your SKS, you will degrade in rifle skill
The day all gas stations around you have been depleted, your truck will turn into a useless thing just sitting there, you will proably eventually gut it
for metal and other supplies. You migth have started out as an office guy, but in the end you will be a cave man. Be wary of this, should you ever attempt to
return to undead civilisation.

This guide is work in progress, everything is subject to change and i take no responsibiltiy in the fate of your character. As if i care, anyway.

By Michael_Rosen 2013