How to stay alive.
Jump to whatever is currently killing you.
Your first hour.
You spawn with a survival guide and nothing else. Find water, loot the edge of a town, and be indoors before dark.
Slot nine
Your Equipment item. Right-click for armour slots and backpack.
Water first
Thirst drains on its own. Right-click a town pump with an empty hand.
Loot the outskirts
Edge houses give cloth, parts, melee and often a pistol. Cities later.
Keys
F reloads, or toggles a flashlight. Double-tap
shift to go prone, then hold sprint to crawl.
Stay quiet
Gunfire draws the infected. A torch shows where you are. Melee does neither.
What death costs
Blueprints and skills are permanent. Your gear stays where you fell.
Your body.
Injuries are tracked apart from your health bar and each needs its own remedy. Carry medicine before you need it.
| Condition | Cause | Cure |
|---|---|---|
Bleeding
|
Melee and bullets. Neck, chest, hands and legs bleed separately. | Bandage, or a medkit for two. A dirty rag works but makes you sick. |
Infection
|
Hits from the infected. Die infected and a walker climbs out of you. | Antibiotics always, painkillers about half the time. |
Broken legs
|
Long falls. No sprinting, heavily slowed. | A splint, one per leg. |
Stomach sickness
|
Rotten flesh and spoiled food. You vomit up food and water. | Nothing. It passes on its own. |
Thirst
|
Ten units, always dropping. At zero it costs health. | Canteen, boozle, wet food, or a town pump. |
Stamina
|
The experience bar. At zero you are slowed, dizzy and blinded. | Stand still, or use adrenaline. |
Go down and you can be picked back up by a teammate. Alone, you bleed out.
Logging out.
The combat tag
Any fight tags you for thirty seconds, and every hit resets it. Safe zones and arenas never tag you.
Quitting tagged
Your body stays in the world as a survivor anyone can kill and loot.
/leave logs you out safely instead.
Where the loot is.
What a building holds is decided by what it was. Better places are further out and better defended.
| Place | What you find |
|---|---|
| Houses | Cloth, parts, rags, tin openers, common melee, sometimes a pistol |
| Pharmacies, hospitals | Bandages, medkits, splints, antibiotics, injections, clean water |
| Police stations | Police armour, riot helmets, gas masks, tasers, batons, pistols |
| Industrial sites | Scrap, nails, duct tape, rubber, gunpowder, repair kits, blueprints |
| Gun shops | Pistols, ammo boxes of every calibre, shells, gunpowder |
| Military bases | Rifles, SMGs, shotguns, sniper ammo, grenades, dynamite |
| Bandit camps | Bandit guns and clothing, drugs, alcohol, coins and wallets |
| Bunkers | Green, blue and red keycard doors. Higher tier, better contents. |
Throwables.
Eight of them, and only three are about damage. The rest buy you something better: a way out, a wall of nothing to see through, or a crowd of infected walking towards somewhere you are not.
| What | What it does |
|---|---|
| Grenade | The standard one. Explodes, hurts most inside about five and a half blocks. |
| Pipe bomb | Improvised and slightly harder hitting than the grenade. The scrap answer to a locked room. |
| Molotov | Sets the ground burning. Less damage on impact than a grenade, but the fire stays after you leave. |
| Flashbang | Reaches much further than anything else — fifteen blocks. Blinds, slows and sickens anyone caught looking. It hurts a little too. |
| Smoke grenade | No damage. Blinds and slows everything in about four blocks, which is enough to cross a street or break contact. |
| Infection bomb | Poison, weakness and slowness rather than an explosion. Meant for people, not for doors. |
| Firecrackers | A decoy. It makes noise and leaves something behind that the infected walk towards, so you can be elsewhere. |
| Dynamite | Found, not crafted, and aimed at what you want opened rather than at a person. |
A safe zone protects you from all of it — a flashbang thrown into one does nothing to the people standing in it.
Things that need power.
The flashlight and the taser do not run on nothing. Each takes a battery, which holds a hundred charges and drains as you use it — and you can pull a battery back out of one gadget and put it into another.
Your base.
Somewhere to leave things is the difference between a run and a save.
Land claimer
Thirty blocks, one per player. Ten hits removes it and all inside.
Build hammer
Needed to place anything. Crouch-click to take your builds down.
Locks
Wooden doors only. /zdoor allow lets a friend in.
Raiding
C4 opens a locked door. Wire, sandbags and mines make it costly.
Other players.
Anyone can kill you anywhere except a safe zone, and being in a team does not stop your own squad shooting you.
Squad up
Up to four. /zteam create, then
/zteam invite. Their names, direction and distance stay
on your compass.
Your nemesis
Whatever kills you can remember it. It takes a name, waits where you
last saw it, and grows with every kill. /znemesis lists
them.
Commands.
The ones you will actually use.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/zguide |
Another copy of the survival guide |
/zprofile |
Your stats, kills and progress |
/zskills |
Skill levels and perk choices |
/zblueprints |
Every recipe you have learned |
/zbalance · /zpay |
Check your money, or send some |
/ztrade |
Face-to-face trade for items and cash |
/zteam |
create · invite · accept · kick · leave · list |
/zarena |
join · leave · list |
/zlocalchat |
Speak only within seventy blocks |
/zdoor |
allow · deny · list · remove, on your doors |
/zwaypoint |
Point your compass at a place |
/ztpa ·
/ztpayes · /ztpano |
Teleport requests |
/zspawn · /zrandomspawn |
The hub, or the wilderness |
/zmutation · /znemesis |
The current strain, and what hunts you |
/ztop |
The server leaderboard |
/zshowequipment |
Toggle whether other players can see your gear |
/zsuicide |
Respawn when you are stuck. You still drop everything. |
/leave |
Log out safely. Closing the game in combat leaves your body and your gear behind. |