Gaffa Tape Warrior

I am a traveller. I have searched this land far and wide for the rare prize. I have seen many people on my quest, but none with minds like my own. I got into more fights than I can remember, and smashed more faces than anybody could. After at long last arduously uncovering seven several dozen of the artefacts, I felt the time had come to settle down with a nice house on a farm. I had become Joseph, lord of the jars, and to this day I guard my hoard.

Since we cant tear down and pick up a wall (at least atm) Why not add the ability to tear down/find wall papers which you can use to put on walls to decorate your house with?

Something's wrong with my actual oven at my actual home. It doesn't burn my house down when food is left in it for too long. It just turns it into charcoal. It's OP and needs a nerf.

Refrigeration is too much of an emphasis to me in this game. Stuff meat with salt and hang it in a cellar and it will keep just fine. Keep veggies as well - especially root vegetables such as potatoes which are basically just seed if they start sprouting. Just keeping most vegetables covered in dirt and in a cool dark corner lets them keep indefinitely and even most fruit is fine to sit out at room temperature. Something like milk (raw) can be fermented for long-term storage if you don't have fridges or just churn it into butter which will keep fine long-term and would be your best bet if you had access to dairy. I also think the jarred goods don't last as long as they should, and you could make lacto-fermented vegetables or use cider vinegar to ferment vegetables without processing them.

Simple solution is allow us to make ethanol and allow level 4 electronics modify generators for ethanol or propane fuel types. alcohol = fruit/sugar + yeast + container. Ethanol = alcohol + kettle + pipe+ steel wool/aluminum + container + heat. yeast = expired bread dough
 
Also, I'd like the idea that the gas stations be mainly out of gas rather quickly if not immediately, but maybe kerosene/diesel remaining.  Electronics could modify cars for it as well.   So early game, jerry can raids, mid game car siphons/propane tanks, late game ethanol production.
 
a reference to generator and car modification. Apparently the government will subsidize you if you make your own fuel which is very interesting indeed. http://www.gobag.org/archives/

If TIS do add zombie fall damage, they could add an awesome splat animation for when they fall from a great height!
Zombie pancakes yay

Now that pre-barricaded houses are a thing (and I love it, 'cuz after clearing them, they make a great place to hide from other hordes), I've started to notice a rather annoying and inaccurate behavior in certain Zeds; those that fall from a second floor.
 
Whenever there's a two floors house that's barricaded and the Zed start pouring out of the 2nd floor's windows (which aren't barricaded), they just fall and keep lunging towards me (even if I set them to ''Weak'' and ''Feeble'') like nothing had happened.
 
I understand that pain and broken bones are alien concepts to a brainless Zed, but still, it feels sorta wrong that they can fall from the same distance that often breaks one of my character's legs and just dash towards me.
 
Could it be possible to change that? I mean, I don't expect them to fall and die (maybe that could go for 3rd floors and higher) but at the very least, I expected them to become ''Ankle Biters''; start crawling on the ground after they fell, because that whole ''Screw Gravity! Imma Zed!'' thing of them sorta feels unrealistic and overpowered.

Hello, I've been watching this game on and off for a while. From previous versions what really got me was the Engineer and electronics that were added. This seemed pretty cool and even more so with the addition of the herbalist.   However, being a chemist and finally being able to play, I've found that I'm not really able to play out my story of surviving the apocalypse, every time i see a bleach canister i'm like oh I wish i could make something with this! Often I'm llke, "come on where are the disinfection wipes why can I just distill this wine into ethanol." or "Let me make meds."
 
So i've thought a bit and decided to make a few suggestions about adding chemistry. So here it is. I've also included suggestions for the electronics field so its a little more diverse. This may be alot, but here are four suggested chemistry related professions:
 
Professions:
Chemist: +2 chemistry +1engineering
Drug Dealer: +1 chemistry, +1 engineering, +1 Aiming +1 blunt
lab tech: +1 chemistry, +1blade&blunt maintenance, +1 first aid
 Chemical:basics:alcohol = fruit/vegatable (or sugar) + yeast + containerdisinfectant [Ethanol] = alcohol + kettle + tube + aluminum (or steal wool) + container + heatglue = flour + watervinegar = wine + ripped sheetsugar = fruit + water + heat + frying pan[sulfuric Acid] = battery + container + screwdriver/knife/(nail+hammer)[Draino] = sulfuric acid + salt + heat + container advanced:[Lye] = Wood ash + water[Acetate] = vingar + wood ash + container[Paint thinner] = perfume + propanebleach = [deadly gas] + [lye]soap = [lye] + water + vegatable/butchered animal (supplies scent masking from zombies)gunpowder = cold pack/fertilizer + [Lye] + water + sulfuric acid + frying pan + heat[knockout gas] = [paint thinner] + bleach + alcohol + container[deady gas] = bleech + (draino) + container (for the love of all things holy don't do this at home. A sniff will hurt your lungs for a week trust me) More advanced: pain killer = [bark] + wiskey/disinfectant + [sulfuric acid] + [acetate]anti-depressant= [root] + (draino) + (paint thinner)beta-blockers = perfume + disinfectant + propane + draino + gunpowder  <--- this formula is kind of a stretch, but decent approximation.   expert:anti-biotic = electronic scraps + [sulfuric acid] + bread or fruit + [draino] + [acetate] + gun powder + sugar + heat  (Not a cure) Playstyles: the chemistry fields require a hide out where they spend the early game stock piling reagents which will most likely be a house since they are lacking in the carpentry department. This requires a lot of containers, storage space (since we are dealing with heavy liquids), and a heat supply. The Drug dealer starts off being able to defend himself with making his own Molotov's before working his way to finding a gun and making his own gunpowder and explosives. (this would be great if we could modify guns into muzzle loaders). The lab tech has some basic knowledge of first aid and how to make first aid supplies being a first responder as well as knowing routine maintenance.  This makes her some durability in the beginning and as time moves on. The Chemist though closer to explosives and medical supplies than the Drug Dealer, he is not as effective in combat and needs to rely on indirect methods. Though he has the knowledge to make drugs, he has to adapt to using more rudimentry methods before production is up and running. He may think about making a cure, but he knows that its just too late to entertain that idea  Other things:  In addition to the chemistry tree, I'd like to compliment the engineering tree for some more versatility such as making batteries and flashlights if they become useful.  In addition to this i would love to see addictions develop in this game.. electronics:battery = electronic parts + container + [sulfuric acid][magnet] = battery + aluminum (or copper if added) + nailflashlight = pencil + pipe + battery + aluminum (make these useful please)[shake flash light] = flash light + [magnet] + aluminum (or copper if added)light fire = battery + aluminum (or steel wool if added)[Taser] = electrical parts + battery (stuns enemy)[taser modification] = [taser] + weapon (stuns enemy)[knockout/deadly gas bomb] with timer/sensor/remote = same as aerosol except with knockout gas useful against hostile npcs/pcs in safehouse defense or attacking/incapacitating zombies if they breathe without damaging structures. Sorry if posting all this seems pretentious, but it's definitely something i'd love to see even if its a mod.

cant figure out how to quote in block properly, so i will go in reverse order.
 
vinegar is made by leaving alcohol opened to bacteria. the ripped sheet is to place a filter ontop of the wine bottle to prevent other contaminants aside from the bacteria from entering while it is open. this takes a couple weeks IRL.
 
flour and water makes a plaster glue which can be quite rigid if you mess with the ratios and add some sugar (maybe should include this, but not exactly needed) which would be good for reinforcing a bat. Not as good as wood glue, but it would work in a pinch.
 
with the disinfectant, we are going for close to pure alcohol (stores use isopropanol so people are less inclined to drink it, eventhough denatured ethanol disinfectant is not safe to drink either (it is denatured so people cant drink it, and thus is not subject to alcohol taxes) the use of isopropyl is more dumby proof). To do this, you place the wine (wiskey is already distilled, but not as distilled as what we are making) in a kettle (closest thing to a pre assembled still), then you connect a tube, and stuff the tube with steel wool.  The purpose of the steel wool is that as the ethanol and water works its way up the tube, it condenses and falls back down onto the steel wool before revaporizing and climbing again. This helps separate the water from the alcohol as the water would be falling more often than the ethanol, and the methanol wouldn't really fall at all and simply evaporates away so there is less risk of methanol poisoning. The use of the steel wools substitutes for the long length of copper looped tubing most amateur distillers need.  The copper tubing has no safe guard from methanol (makes you blind in high concentrations) and thus people when they make moonshine, they throw out the first portion. Ideally you want a thermometer so you can see when things are going through the column and when to stop.  For instance, methanol boils at around 70°C, the temperature inside the kettle will stop there until all is boiled out, then it will rise to 80°C and stop there for a while this is the ethanol.  Once the thermometer passes 80°C, you know you are only making steam, and thus should stop. I've made 97% or 194 proof alcohol in this manner.
 
The things that are not real are the things requiring propane as what you really need is propene, but i wanted to build on pre-existing items. The biggest stretch as i mentioned is the beta blockers as this requires benzene (perfume) + ethanol + a furon/ether + chlorine source (draino in this case) + isopropylamine.  Again I wanted pre-existing items to approximate, so it doesn't get a convoluted as real chemistry and the chemistry skill should in itself break the convolutedness instead of the player knowing, so I substituted the furon/ether for ethanol. Used gunpowder (a source of nitrate) and propane to make the isopropylamine (though you really need propene).
 
for the other medicines, I'm not going to say which root or which bark or what drug it actually makes, but draino (HCl) and paint thinner (acetone) works though not nearly as pure as commercial grade. these are prepared in a specific way which again i'm not going to iterate, but it works lol.  with both of these you get the effect from the root and the bark, but there are major side effects.  The bark will make you vomit and diarrea and overall dehydrate you which is horrible for the pain relieving benefit. The anti-biotic I will mention is how you make penicillin, but again its missing the procedural component that should be simply explained by chemistry skill.
 
for gunpowder, IRL all you need is nitrate from Urine or fertilzer or ammonium nitrate in cool packs + potassium from plant matter such as hay or wood ash + carbon from wood ash + a source of sulfur. You boil off the liquids and then have powder which you grind into a semi-fine powder and you are good to go. Here is a vid of someone making it with urine https://youtu.be/8wW5KR1pDxs
 
for deadly gas, if you mix bleach and hydrochloric acid you get chlorine gas which was used in world war one to dissolve soldiers lungs effectively making them drown in their own bodily fluids. I've done this in a lab myself for an experiment of mine. The knockout gas (chloroform) is made exactly as prescribed, but isn't as effective IRL as movies and games make people believe. I've hoffed chloroform with no effects, and it only works with constant supply. As soon as a person is no longer breathing it, they wake up. It is good however for dissolving bodies. I've not made it myself, but its in the lab I work at.
 
the flash light and shake flashlight are legit, you can youtube it. The magnetized nail however loses its magnetism fast, but its easily remagnetized.
 
edit: you can make propene from heating gasoline, but I think thats a little pushing it from a game stand point, so I just reflavored propane which you could also heat to lesser effect.

I've been playing build 33 and was thinking (like you) that you now own a sledge or live out in the woods :/
 
Having ladders would add a new option at least. Assuming you can place it from below It would allow you to climb up to otherwise inaccessible areas. No one wants to sleep on a roof under the stars on a foldable chair but it's certainly preferable to being zombie food.
 
I also like the notion of 2 ladder types. You could have an option to pull the free standing ladder up with you after you've climbed it so you can use it again to get down somewhere else (assuming the zombies don't knock it over before you can grab it!). Fastened ladders obviously would require skill and tools to install and remove.

It seems to me on higher difficulties there are two ways to go about your day.
 
1. Put a sheet rope on a house and destroy the stairs
2. Live in the woods.
 
Sheet Ropes
 
TIS are evil. I'm evil (when it comes to thinking of ideas) and it occurred to me that sheet ropes are fantastic method to escape a house when it's on fire but they're certainly not a great thing to rely upon long term.
 
I mean think about it logically. You tie some bedsheets together or worse, jumpers or pants and you use that to scale two stories (or more!) to your house every day and down every morning. Now let's assume for a moment that you've been incredibly careful tying the knots and the cloth is good quality that still wouldn't account for weather and general wear and tear from use.
 
Example: Like I say, I'm a little bit evil. It would be fantastic to catch a new player out. A player who has spent weeks doing work on his safe-house but didn't have the presence of mind to put more than one sheet rope from his safe house. One day he starts scaling down his sheet rope and it detaches/breaks and the player sprains his ankle or worse a fracture or a break.
Worse of all, now the player has no method of getting back to their safe house so now they have a fractured leg and no safe house and they probably left most of what they consider important upstairs. I know I would.
 
The exception might be if you actually used a rope instead of a sheet rope but even then weather will play it's part. The rope will fray and eventually break depending on the amount of traffic it sees.
That isn't conjecture, the sheet rope/rope will break. It's a case of when, not if. The heavier the weather, the greater the extremes between hot and cold would both play a large part.
 
Which brings me to...
 
Free standing ladders
 
So the idea here is that you either find or construct a ladder. A found ladder would be unlikely to break but it would be a liability if zombies were about. It's not a stretch of the imagination to speculate that a zombie could knock this ladder over. This too would make for a very interesting game mechanic.
 
It's not unrealistic to imagine that a wooden ladder could be constructed. Again it's safety could be dependant upon the carpenter who built it. Build a ladder at level zero and it'll be a rickety piece of crap and more likely to kill you than help you but at level 10 it'll hold firm in an earthquake.
 
Attached Ladders
 
There should be an option to attach the ladder to the wall. Applying the aforementioned about constructed ladders it would seem sensible to take a constructed ladder and then nail it to the wall so it's secure. I would imagine that would require some alteration so it's stands out from the wall a little otherwise your hands and feet would not be able to get purchase on the ladder.
 
 
I appreciate that ladders *must* have been discussed before so just remember I don't check to see what's been discussed because I feel that in the process of writing this I'm bound to have touched upon something someone else has missed.
And as ever, I'm just throwing around ideas. If you don't like the idea then hit me in the stomach please, not in the face. That's where the magic happens.
 
Note: For that picture I googled 'man falling from sheet rope' and that was the first image I found. I censored it just in case someone gets offended. I know, nobody ever gets offended on the internet but I thought I'd play it safe.

Two parts to this suggestion:
 
1. Wet wood (stop that giggling at the back!)
2. Campfire proficiency
 
1. Wet wood.
 
So as I'm sure you all know. It's a bad idea to set wood on fire when it's wet. It makes a huge ploom of grey smoke that can be seen for miles and would invariably attract the Z's.
 
I'd like to see this reflected in the game. Keep wood stored in a dry place. If you don't it would be extremely difficult to light with a notched plank and stick and would be awkward to light otherwise unless you had some sort of primer like lighter fluid. Even if you did light it the consequences as I touched on above could be disastrous.
 
Which leads me to number two.
 
2. Campfire proficiency
 
With the aforementioned in mind you could create a basic tiered system or perhaps tag it to the carpentry skill or hiking/scout perk (to simplify matters)
 
You could have a couple of levels of fire. You could have the basic fire but you could also have a 'steath fire' (not my nomenclature) something like this:
 

 
I can image this being touched on before. I'm sorry, I have scoured the forum so I apologise if I've trampled on anyone's toes. I've not done it on purpose and I'm glad to give you the credit you might deserve. As ever, I'm just spitting ideas, if you don't like them, don't hurt me, I'm only little.

Those suggestions seem pretty good as far as my knowledge goes. I seem to remember a few of them already having been suggested though. It might be a good idea to click on the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner to conduct a search to see if it's already been suggested once or twice or thrice or eleven more times. The climbing harness is a good idea. You could make very good use of one of them. Here's something archery related (Warning! Not for vegetarians!) http://aviationweek.typepad.com/ares/2007/04/why_wear_body_a.html

Left to do what they will, zombies will spend all day and night loitering in the streets, vandalizing windows and looking to get into fights. What this does is provide employment for the lower class, and allow them to work towards something greater than themselves.
Maybe somebody with the "strong" trait could jog across town with three hiking bags. If there is only a short distance to cover, then it might not be worth bringing your whole entourage, and just going alone. Even a strong person could make good use of zombie porters though. Unlike horses, zombies need eat nothing, so it may be that they tire not, and they are not frightened by anything. A survivor, weak or strong, may want to avoid tiring himself out carrying all the logs or other things himself. He may have a long distance to travel, making bringing his zombies along worth it so that only one such trip would be needed. If it turns out that zombies cannot get up again if they are carrying too much, and you really want them to carry that much, then maybe you could try making something like a zombie zimmer frame with wheels that fits several zombies on it, but then it might only be good on roads, where cars (if you want to use the fuel) and wagons and horses and asses and mules would also be good. If you need to run or fight, then you could quickly loop the leash around something and use a karabiner, and come back later. It's not that zombie slaves/cattle would be completely better or worse than horses or cars.
I've never seen The Walking Dead.

In addition to what has been mentioned so far, choosing to be 45 could mean you get to pick two jobs that your guy has had over the course of his life, and three if you choose 70 years old. If he's had the same job for his whole working life then the benefits could add up. A 70 year old carpenter who's being doing carpentry since he was young would be really quite skilled. And because of changing culture, maybe old people should automatically know more about farming and carpentry and foraging and that sort of thing. Various weaknesses of the body are downsides of old age.
It is possible to still be black-haired and healthy at 65, and this bit could be done with the traits system.
 
(It seems posting in old threads is less against the guidelines than making a new one identical to another, and considering the topic it is interesting that an elderly thread is being appreciated like the young'uns.)

It depends on what Project Zomboid is meant to be. If it's simply meant to be a game about being in Kentucky with zombies then pipes should be as common as pipes are common. If the game is meant to be about being in Kentucky with zombies and a god who wants to make things more difficult by making most worldly posessions disappear, then pipes should be rarer that they actually are.

I have climbed down knotted bedsheets from a 2nd story window, having been taught nothing about knots but what the tying of shoelaces consists of. I have also done the same with rope. My success rate was 100%. I didn't use a nail nor a hammer. Just knots.

You would still need powder, and bombs aren't that over powered, the chance to drop from these places could be limited for the sake of balance. Like how you can chop down trees for logs. if we cared for balanced we shouldn't be able to chop down trees for wood. 

Commonly found under sinks, bathtubs, water-heaters, plumbing of a house.
And I just so happen to have this nice sledge hammer!!! 
 
Basically whenever a tile with pipes in it is deconstructed with either a screwdriver, or a sledge hammer there is a good change it will drop a pipe.
 
It'd be cool if pipes could be used for more than just bombs, like if you could build fences, irrigation systems, showers, and so forth.

I don't know if it's really so much you pushing back something like 5 zombies as much as you pushing back a zombie or two and they then slam in to zombies behind them, pushing them with their own momentum. Realistic, IMO.
 
Staggering from melee hits is also realistic, as is cautiously taking on large groups so long as you don't get worn out and tired. Zombies have no self preservation. They don't guard against attacks or try to dodge. They don't care if they get hit. If you wailed someone in the head with an object and even if they felt no pain,they'd be staggered because of the force throwing the head back and interrupting balance.
 
If melee weapons hit and cause the same damage as to their initial target, yeah I agree maybe that should be tweaked. Maybe 2 or 3 hit with the arc of the swing with damage dropping sharply with each subsequent hit to account for lost momentum. However I don't really remember any time in the recent builds where I have killed more than one zombie with a swing, even with a highly skilled and strong axeman. Knocked several back, sure.. But I don't ever remember more than one being outright killed with one blow, but then again maybe I just am not paying close enough attention.
 
To be honest, if they went super realistic with the combat mechanics I think it would favor the humans more and more. The only things the Zombies really have over us is numbers, lack of fatigue, and that attacks that don't either cripple or outright kill being wholly ineffective due their lack of pain or suffering from blood loss. They aren't good fighters and they are totally unintelligent. If you went more even realistic, once you killed a big group they would likely be tripping and stumbling over the corpses of the others. Making them even slower and easier to kite. The same could happen to a person of course, but as long as you watched where you go it would be easy to use it as yet another tool to make hordes even easier.
 
If the player's ability to deal with the smallish hordes (sub 20s?) is further nerfed then you start forcing retreat as the only option and that's not fun. Not an easy thing to balance especially given the wide range of player skills out there.
 
In my opinion putting a lot of effort towards changing how zombies work seems like a bad idea before NPCs make an arrival. Other Humans (especially aggressive ones) will add not only their own challenge to the game, but zombie movement and behavior will be more erratic as they are dragged all over by the sounds and sights of all the extra fleshy meatbags scurrying about.

I would probably end up using tents in trees. Maybe just a tarpaulin and some cord and some good clothing. With something like a spear to fell zombies that may gather.

I don't think suggestions should be anchored on what one person can do in real-life but on what random people who might survive such an event could do.  I came from a rural area and even in most rural areas most people don't have a lot of "hard skills".  If 1% of the population survived such an event as in PZ what would they look like?  Data from the American BLS suggests that roughly (with some rounding http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm):
 
-13.5% of the population is in goods-producing (mining, construction, manufacturing)
-1.5% of the population is in agriculture forestry and fishing
-85% of the population is in services (retail clerks, waitress, lawyers, teachers, bankers, IT, doctors, etc) 
 
Most people thus aren't going to know the first think about logging, building, farming, etc.  Even the people that do, many of them just operate a tractor full-time, or drive a dump truck, etc , they specialize and don't have the broad beginning-to- end knowledge of how to do much of that.  I did know someone who had a roommate who did old fashioned blacksmithing/armor making as a hobby.  But what would they do in a PZ world? I doubt they know how to mine for iron ore and smelt that into something usable...
 
But rather than argue about who is right, it would be more useful to think about what people's practical hobbies they learned BEFORE the event translate into practical skills that could then be represented in the game.  A good example is the scouting hobby which in-game translate quite well from what you would practically learn in real life from that.  I know a software guy who makes his own furniture as a hobby and its quite impressive.  I'm sure he is more of a carpenter than anyone in my small rural town.   Making pottery as a hobby is taking off again, and would provide the basics of understanding brick making from clay etc.  Same with people that knit, fish, do home improvements, play sports, etc. 
 
I think PZ could incorporate more specialized unique crafting like you mention, but it shouldn't be available to all.  You shouldn't be able to learn some extremely specialized skills after the event that caused the apocalypse.   The really interesting stuff should require costly character traits and then only be available to certain character with those traits.   But something like that translated to PZ should take a lot of char traits and only be avail to that char as it doesnt seem like something you could easily pick up and learn on the fly as a survivor.  This would also facilitate better trading and barter in MP games among the survivors for each others unique goods.

Folks back in the day build and use this all the time out in the country. So why not in the apocalypse to keep the fridge, stove running and the lights on?
 
Add electric fence while you're at it...
 

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

Something's wrong with my actual oven at my actual home. It doesn't burn my house down when food is left in it for too long. It just turns it into charcoal. It's OP and needs a nerf.

When Brad Pitt wrapped magazines around his forearms with some duct tape I thought "Damn that's a good idea". So simple, yet so effective against a human bite. Light weight and can be found just about anywhere. No skills required.
 
I don't think we need metal armor. I'd rather just wear a leather jacket or a mesh kevlar motorcycle jacket. Metal armor is heavy, cumbersome, noisy, and likely a pain to get on and off. What advantage does it have over leather when it comes to zombies? Remember you don't have to outrun the zombie, just your slowest 'friend'. Sure if someone was attacking me with a machete, I would want metal armor. I doubt anything you could fashion would be all that effective against bullets either, afterall gunpowder (and economics) was the downfall of the armored knight, and those early firearms were TERRIBLE.