This game is harder than it looks, and most first-run deaths come from playing it like a shooter. The single most important adjustment is this: you are not supposed to kill everything. Noise and lingering in one place make zombies spawn without limit, so a fight you refuse to start is a fight you win.
The five habits that keep you alive
Run past what you can. Engagement is optional far more often than it feels. If the objective is elsewhere and the path is open, take it.
Watch the spawn counter. There is a spawn count on the right side of each location. When it hits 10, leave. That is the community's threshold and it is a reliable one — past that number the area is generating more than a squad can clear.
Keep the flashlight off. It drains battery. When you are carrying a two-handed weapon you can toggle between the weapon and the flashlight, so you can search with light and still swap back to a ready weapon instantly rather than being caught mid-loot.
A zombie still making noise on the ground is not dead. It will get back up. This costs people their runs constantly, and it is worse on the Survival map Flooded, where standing water makes downed bodies genuinely hard to read.
Cars are not safety. Zombies climb onto vehicle roofs. Standing on a car buys seconds — kill the runner chasing you and get off.
Inventory habits
- Supplies weigh nothing and take no space. Pick up every one you see. They convert to Credits for your next run's loadout. The exception is the special items an extraction requires, which you actually need to carry.
- Hold U to strip ammunition out of a gun you are not taking, rather than leaving the rounds behind.
- You can attach a suppressor or flashlight to a gun during the match. You do not have to plan every attachment in the loadout menu beforehand.
- Open everything. Black cabinets, drawers, black-and-yellow crates, car boots and bonnets, fridges, cupboards. Safes are usually behind railings.
Navigation and objectives
Press C to open the compass, which shows the direction of the current objective and a list in the bottom-right corner. In settings you can turn on permanent objective display so you are not pressing C every ten seconds — do this before your first match.
Fighting when you have to
Shoves become kicks if you hold the button. Kicks have invulnerability frames, which means two players kicking in sequence can hold a small group off a doorway. Get the angle right and a single kick catches three zombies.
White doors and barricaded doors can be kicked open. Blue doors and doors with metal bars cannot. Stop wasting time on the ones that will not move.
Do not hit your own barricades with a melee weapon. You will destroy them.
If the whole building is coming for you, do not start the lockpick minigame — shoot the lock. The time cost of the minigame under pressure is worse than the noise cost of the shot.
Stealth works, and better boots make it noticeably more effective.
Red zombies are primary infected. Kill them first, including the red sprinter that makes an "alpha" throat noise. This is the same enemy others describe as blood-covered with glowing yellow eyes — one enemy, two descriptions, not two types.
Minigame solutions
These come up on every map and almost nobody explains them.
Fuse boxes and wiring. See a 3B on the left, find the matching 3B on the right, click one then the other to connect them. Numbers with no match get skipped. When everything is connected, click the breaker in the bottom-right corner — forgetting to flip it is the most common failure.
Generators. Either deliver a fuel can, or use the panel: a marker sweeps left to right and you click when it is in the green zone.
Circuit board repair. Hold the interact key — E by default — on the target.
Radio tuning. Align the waveform first, then fine-tune to the frequency number. Working from the number alone never lands.
Power Plant transformers. The late stage may ask you to replace one. There are around ten in the room, and you need someone covering you while you carry.
Where the good loot is
- Lewiston and Broadway both have enterable shops. Insert a fuse to restore power. The Lewiston shop has a safe that produces bandages and guns.
- Pottsville's school gymnasium has a small room that reliably holds several rifles and medical supplies.
Infection, briefly
Two things to know on day one, with the full mechanics on their own page.
Above 50% health, a normal zombie hit will not infect you. So use your bandages — hoarding them to stay "prepared" is exactly backwards, because low health is itself what makes infection likely. Screamer gas is the exception: players report catching it at full health.
Only take Phalanx Pills when the red veins appear at the edge of the screen. Each dose resets the five-minute turn timer, and a bottle of three buys close to fifteen minutes. The classic new-player mistake is swallowing the whole bottle at the first cough and burning it in minutes. Pills never cure you — they only buy time.
If your stamina is at zero when a zombie grabs you, there is no struggle prompt. You are bitten regardless of your health. Never sprint yourself empty in a crowd.
One squad rule
When teammates are waiting to respawn, completing a main objective brings them back — on Beginner and Normal. Pushing the objective is often the fastest way to get your squad whole again, rather than holding position and waiting.