Talk:Survival Guide

From PZwiki
Revision as of 17:19, 25 October 2014 by Connall (talk | contribs) (→‎I want to reorganize the entire page's structure..)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

This article should be written in a "survival guide" fashion. I can see the person who wrote it made it with Story Mode in mind but derails into a Sandbox Mode walk-through.

Can I have permission to re-write this article? I'm asking because I know it's an important page. --Vagrant 01:00, 16 April 2012 (BST)

Started work on the survival guide now. Going to see if I can't get it a bit more up to date. -Connall 10:26, 13 November 2013

Flagged up as outdated

Anybody have any idea why the person who added the outdated notice would add it? From what I can see the guide is more or less up to date. --Connall (talk) 16:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Ruth's Changes

About the deleted sections..

I went ahead and did two updates for this page. Regrettably two portions have been removed entirely and although I appreciate the thought involved by the people who contributed the information I couldn't help but find the information unhelpful. Let me explain my reasons.

The “Starting Off” section was a tutorial of the main menu. It explained what each button does. This would be fine if the main menu was difficult to understand, but I find it hard to see how this could be the case for any player. Additionally, the explanations were obvious and unhelpful. For example the section included bullet-pointed lines such as “exit (exits the game)”, “options (opens up the options menu)”, join server (opens up the join server menu)”, “last stand (opens up the last stand challenge menu)”.. et al. I personally don't find this necessary. Maybe if the explanations were more elaborate and imaginative the section would be relevant, but in the final state I thought it was a waste of space. Hate me all you like but I kind of doubt anyone needs to spend time reading that “button X opens up the X menu”.

Also, the “Controls” section was a tutorial on the tutorial. While the inclusion of the line pointing out the error in the in-game tutorial is relevant and useful, I found redundancies in both 1) pointing out features of the GUI (as in the previous section) and 2) advising new players to read the tutorial. This is obvious information and the in-game tutorial opens automatically for any new installation, prompting new players to pay heed. I feel the GUI is well laid-out requires no explanation, nor will any new player close the tutorial with the intention of assuming doing so will benefit them greater. I put any relevant information from this section into the new “Starting Off” section.

Hopefully you'll understand why I made the changes I did. While the original content was well-intended and characteristically stylized it distracted from main bulk of the article, which ideally shares obscured or initially unreachable knowledge with new players. This page has an enormous amount of potential and I want to ensure the information it conveys is concise and adequate.

I'll likely be adjusting this section periodically. Please feel free to discuss this issue or challenge my decisions: This is a cooperative effort to create content which is universally acceptable and I personally feel compromises are easy to implement as long as people are reasonable about explaining their ideas.

Thanks! SecretWeaponCoffee (talk) 14:25, 16 October 2014 (BST)

I want to reorganize the entire page's structure..

While I think the current topics are fair, they do seem a little disorganized. I'm thinking of a new structure, and my proposal follows below. Obviously this is a fairly large change so I'd appreciate some input from wiki-users -- do you think a reorganization would be helpful, and if so, is my template suitable? Did I forget anything or add something unnecessary? I'm not 100% on the topic order, maybe it should be alphabetized? I think that could be better.. if 4-18 was alphabetized.. hm, please let me know.. :]

Before
   1 Character Creation
   2 Interface
   3 The Map
   4 Tips
   5 Starting Off
       5.1 Preliminary
       5.2 Establishing Your First Safe-House
           5.2.1 Taking Care of Yourself
           5.2.2 Getting Armed
           5.2.3 Gathering Supplies
           5.2.4 Improving the Safehouse
   6 Late Game
       6.1 Farming
       6.2 Fishing
       6.3 Trapping
       6.4 Water after the water works fail
       6.5 Traveling Great Distances
   7 Scavenging/Looting Buildings
       7.1 Picking a Location
       7.2 Breaking In
       7.3 Clearing
   8 Encounters
   9 Moodles
       9.1 Injuries & First Aid
   10 Leveling Up
   11 Crafting
   12 Barricading and Carpentry
   13 Events
   14 Death
   15 See Also
After
   1 Introduction (Info abut the interface and moodles go here)
   2 Character Creation (Needs additional info about which traits are good)
   3 Game Progression
       5.1 Early-game (Info about establishing your first safe-house goes here, basically a guide to surviving day one, mostly instructions)
       5.2 Mid-game (Info about what the player's goals will be once s/he is established)
       5.3 Late-game (Info about what endgame has to offer, mostly suggestions)
   4 The Environment (Info about the map and events goes here, also rain and darkness, possibly merged with "traveling")
   5 Scavenging and Storage (Info about scavenging, also info abut which items are truly useless (toohbrush, etc)), info about containers (all 50)
   6 Combat (Info about encounters, stealth, tactics etc.)
   7 Crafting (Info about crafting including suggested early-game items like the nail bat)
   8 Traveling (Info about getting around, long-distances etc, possibly merged with "the environment")
   9 Food and Cooking (Info about cooking, skill multipliers, useful food to make e.g. stew, info about preserving food and using perishable ingredients first)
   10 Health and Medicine (Info about staying healthy and using medicine appropriately, also info about scratches and zombification)
   11 Shelter (Info about building/creating a secure base of operations)
   12 Carpentry and Construction (Info about fortifications and useful carpentry recipes)
   13 Farming (Info about farming, advice about finding and maintaining a suitable field)
   14 Fishing (Info about fishing, crafting a rod, finding water)
   15 Trapping (Info about trapping, crafting traps, bait)
   16 Water and Hydration (Info about finding water and finding it again once it's gone)
   17 Leveling Up (Info about skill upgrades and what returns they give, possible suggestions also)
   18 Death (Info about the inevitability of death, recording your score and finding your old corpses, also about drinking bleach to commit suicide if you're infected)
   19 Misc Tips (Anything not covered above)
   20 See Also (Other pages, external links)

SecretWeaponCoffee (talk) 14:07, 17 October 2014 (BST)

An update. I'm working on a complete rewrite of the entire page. It will include all of the information currently here, however some parts have been condensed. Unfortunately my narrative style tends to be clinical, and although I believe this is important for any wiki, it means the personality of certain previous editors has been replaced by one which I feel is more impartial. In other words, I'm removing asides, humor, and general fluff. If all goes well the change will happen in the next week or two and while I don't expect any great objection I do still urge people to voice their opinions. All things considered, I'm confident everyone will be satisfied with the changes. SecretWeaponCoffee (talk) 17:49, 18 October 2014 (BST)
Done editing for a few days. The categories came out a little different than expected. Instead of transforming the entire page overnight I'd rather do it gradually so people can voice any concerns. SecretWeaponCoffee (talk) 02:22, 24 October 2014 (BST)
I'll give this the thumbs up if you want to do it. While being clinical is fine, I certainly don't mind. As long as we're not pestering editors to FORCE them to be clinical, then really how it's written is not much concern. The general structure you are suggesting sounds good and if you decide to go through with it, I'll be sure to check it out. :) -- Connall Project Zomboid Wiki Manager 18:19, 25 October 2014 (BST)

Best weapon of choice

In my opinion, crowbars suck. They are heavy, don't do that much damage and exhaust you pretty quickly. I prefer the Frying pan, because they aren't heavy, they are very common and you don't get exhausted so quickly. Anyone agrees? Put your opinion down below ;)

(And btw, you don't have to add the damage values, just put a link to the Weapons page)

So for me it would be:

Tier 1:

  • Axe
  • Frying Pan
  • (Nailed)Baseball Bat

Tier 2:

  • Hammer
  • Golf Club
  • Crowbar
  • Rolling Pin
  • Kitchen Knife
  • Poolcue

Tier 3: (You should only use these when you really can't find anything else)

  • Screwdriver
  • Butter knife
  • Fork
  • Spoon
  • Pencil
  • Pen
I haven't checked weapon statistics, but yes frying pans are good and crowbars probably aren't tier 1. SecretWeaponCoffee (talk) 13:21, 17 October 2014 (BST)