1. Be aware. I always do a 360 to check my surroundings before, during (when you get the chance), and after combat. check for any sounds during combat that sound like they may be coming from behind, because they probably are. The keen hearing trait helps with this.

2. Don't be a hero. Never ever take any risks that you feel like you cannot take on at the moment.

3. Shoving is one of your most important tools to your disposal. If you are desperate, you can shove a an isolated zombie or two over and stomp them to death. Shoving also gives precious breathing room against a group of zombies, allowing you make some more distance to either escape or get some more swings in.

1. Certain weapons, despite looking cool or having high damage values, have noticeably low durability. These include (and are not limited to): the hand scythe, the rake/leaf rake, the shovel/snow shovel, the hockey stick, the electric guitar, the saucepan, the crafted spear, and all the knives.

2. Other weapons have much, much higher durability and should either be used primarily or saved for later use depending on your sensibilities. These include (and are not limited to): the meat cleaver, the hand axe, the axe, the wood axe, the lead pipe/metal bar/metal pipe, the nightstick, the pipe wrench, the frying pan, the baseball bat/spiked baseball bat, the electric bass guitar, the pickaxe, the sledgehammer, the crowbar, and many more.

3. However, regardless of how much durability a weapon has, how much durability is lost on hit is affected by your maintenance and weapon skills. This can lead to some variation in how long your weapons last, and you can sometimes find your less durable weapons lasting a lot longer than you'd think. I'm not the best at math so if you want a more detailed explanation you can go to the zomboid wiki or watch the "Durability is overly complicated" video by retanaru on youtube.

4. Weapons also can have wildly different swing speeds. The wood axe and sledge hammer have some of the slowest swings that can make combat with them almost impractical, while others such as the rake, nightstick and pool cue can have far faster swing speeds.

5. Occasionally, you can find weapons impaled in zombies. While on the first days you'll only find weak weapons such as screwdrivers, bread knives, and letter openers in them, the quality of the weapons increases as the days go on. Eventually you can find weapons such as crowbars, hunting knives, and even ninja swords impaled through zombies. I've personally found hand axes embedded in zombies as early as day 3 or 4 (july 12/13).

6. Blade weapons and axes damage the clothing zombies are wearing on hit. This is most noticeable with high damage weapons such as the axe and machete, which can completely destroy their clothes with enough hits. If you want to keep a zombies clothes intact, use blunt weapons.

7. When a zombie is on the ground, aim for their head. Hitting a downed zombie's head does much more damage. This is most noticeable if you try to stomp a zombie's legs vs their head. Line up the cursor with their head for the most accuracy.

8. hyperthermia and hypothermia at their worst reduce your swing speed by 90% and prevents you from jogging. You may want to take off clothes during fights if you find yourself overheated, or put on more clothes if you find yourself freezing.

9. The hammer and ball peen hammer are only capable of hitting 1 zombie at a time, even with multi hit turned on. Be very careful when you use them as weapons.

10. (Tip from Cody in the comment section) Spears have SO much more range, they will keep you from getting grabbed. I know i've missed a swing on a long blunt only to get grabbed into a horde! Take the Handyman trait for Maintenance skill for a 75% exp boost that reduces your durability loss and increases the viability of using spears!


11. Spears can hit zombies through chain link fences, however it can be a bit buggy and unreliable sometimes, especially if they're moving.

12. While not particularly useful, and only really noticeable at lower weapon skill levels, the killing blow on a zombie will have a slightly faster swing animation than normal (Not sure if this works with spears though). Maybe you can use this to your advantage in some way.

1. You move fastest in the combat stance when moving in one of the cardinal directions, rather than moving diagonally. This can be the difference between life or death when escaping/fighting a group. The nimble skill also governs how fast you move in the combat stance, so keep that in mind.

2. When you need to back away from a horde while you're in the combat stance, don't jog. Jogging while lock you into an animation for a couple milliseconds. Depending on how close the zombies are, that may be long enough for them to grab and surround you.

3. When you are not over encumbered, suffering from heatstroke, in agony, overly exerted, or overly tired, you can easily outpace the zombies simply by walking.

4. Do not fight a horde if you are already exerted or tired. Once you hit the first stage of exertion, become drowsy, or both, you cannot deal with hordes. While you can still fight, your damage is reduced by 50% from only having the first level of either. Having the highest level moodle for either means you deal 95% less damage, while also swinging much slower. Exertion can be reduced simply by standing still, and is sped up by sitting on the ground or resting at a chair/sofa/bed. Tiredness can only be reduced by sleeping or by drinking/eating coffee, and once you get that moodle you need to head home and avoid combat for the rest of the day.

5. Always be outside if possible when you are clearing a horde. Fighting indoors limits your wiggle room, puts you at risk of being cornered, and having your exits cut off by the horde.

6. NEVER fight a horde at night, during a storm, in the dark, or in thick fog. The reduced visibility will get you killed. This honestly goes for regular combat as well. It's just not worth it. Once the power goes out carry a flashlight with you for light when you go into windowless/large buildings.

7. When clearing a horde, the strategy that works the best for me is to kite a handful of zombies at a time away from the horde by sneaking in front of any stragglers or zombies that are facing away from the rest. Usually i get around 2-3 at a time and don't start attacking them until I'm a good distance away from the rest of the horde. Zombies do hear when you swing and hit other zombies, so you want to make sure you don't accidentally get the rest of the horde on you. Keep doing this and you'll eventually destroy the horde.

8. If you are going to use a car to clear a horde, make sure its one you don't care about with a decent condition engine. Hitting your car with a zombie really messes it up, especially the engine. The lower the engine's condition, the lower the car's acceleration and top speed. The engine also has a chance to stall once it's condition goes below 50%, which increases as the condition worsens. And once you're surrounded with a busted engine, all you can really do is get out of the car and pray for the best.

9. When using a car to destroy a horde, it's always best to ram trunk-first rather than head on. This ensures the engine is preserved and protected from damage as long as possible. If you care about the car you're using for this, it allows you to continue using it while only requiring minimal, easy, and mostly non essential repairs (depending on how much damage you do to the trunk). If it's a car you don't care about then you can use it again immediately after for more horde killing as the trunk's condition is even less important to you.

10. Play with zombie respawning turned off. While this is more of a personal preference, It ensures hordes in areas you've already cleared wont just respawn after a couple of days. There are plenty of areas around Knox county to explore and find more zombies to kill.

I don't really use guns at all, since the last time i really played this game was back in 2016/2017 when guns were deathtraps and it's been ingrained in me that they are useless. But, if you do want to use guns, the shotguns are the best choice as they have the best hit chance at low aiming skills. Keep in mind that guns are very, very loud and may attract unwanted attention.

UPDATED SECTION

Now that I've had a lot more experience with guns, I feel like I'm somewhat qualified to give advice on how and when to use them. But keep in mind that I'm not your dad and you can use your guns however you please. I'm going to assume the people who read this play with the targeting highlight turned on (because you should). I'm also going to keep the old message above for context regarding my experience

Shotguns
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Tip for the JS-2000 - after fully reloading the JS-2000 (when your character racks the shotgun) you can load in another shell as the chambered round doesn't count as being in the internal magazine anymore, allowing you an extra 7th shot.

JS-2000 (pump action shotgun) - Simultaneously one of the best ways to destroy zombies and attract zombies, the JS-2000 is an incredibly useful weapon in the right hands. The JS-2000 can hit up to 5 zombies with one shot, with the sawed-off variant hitting up to 6 at the cost of more noise and worse durability. Shotguns in general are the absolute best guns for gaining aiming experience, especially when used against large hordes. I can't emphasize enough how good shotguns are for leveling aiming, especially for the early levels. However, shotguns are also some of the loudest things in the game, with every shot drawing the attention of zombies within a hundred tiles of the player. You better have enough shells with you to kill enough of the horde you gather that you can wear them down with melee weapons or quieter guns.

Double Barrel Shotgun - The double barrel is incredibly similar to the JS-2000, however it only has two shots given that it's a double barreled shotgun. It makes up for this with its fast reload speed, tighter spread/accuracy, and inability to jam. As far as I know, the sawed-off double barrel has the same positives and negatives as the sawed-off JS-2000. While I generally prefer the JS-2000, the double barrel is still an effective weapon.

Ammo - Shotgun shells are the heaviest ammo type in the game, with a box of 24 shells weighing 0.9 (1.2 when unpacked) For better reference, A single shotgun shell weighs five times more than a single 9mm round, and box of 30 9mm rounds weighs less than a fourth of a box of shotgun shells. Ammo weight when using shotguns can definitely be an issue, and you may have to drop tools, backpacks, other guns, extra melee weapons and unnecessary clothing items to balance out your weight.

Pistols
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Preface - Pistols don't become particularly viable or reliable until aiming level 4. You can use pistols at level 3 but you'll have to stand around waiting for your accuracy to focus in before then.

Tip for Magazine fed guns- After loading a magazine into an empty gun, you can take the magazine back out, load another bullet into it, and put it back in while keeping the round in the chamber. This will give you an extra bullet to fire.

M36 Revolver - This gun is my personal favorite firearm in the game. While it appears to be a wimpy, snubnosed pistol with a paltry damage value, don't be deceived. Despite the snubnose, The M36 is actually the most accurate pistol in the game, while also being the quietest gun in the game, only drawing zombies in from 30 tiles away. It's so quiet that I've had zombies I could see on my screen not hear it. It is also the lightest revolver in the game. Like the other revolvers, it cannot jam and doesn't require magazines. Unlike the other revolvers, It has a very fast firing speed, and while this is hurt by a low capacity of only 5 bullets, you can reload fast enough with a couple levels in reloading that it doesn't really matter, has the lower capacity allows it finish reloading faster than the other revolvers. One of the main cons of this gun is that it can actually be pretty rare. You're only really gonna be finding these in gun cases from houses, car glove boxes, or rarely on police officer zombies. The same goes for the ammo as well. You're just generally going to be finding far more 9mm, .45 auto, shotgun shells or .308 rather than .38 special. The M36 also cannot be upgraded with any weapon mods. With all these differences, the M36 is almost in a league of its own compared to the other revolvers.

M625 Revolver - The M625 is a slow, yet heavy hitting revolver. Firing .45 auto, It's a very common find pretty much anywhere. Gun cases from houses, glove boxes, police department armories, zombified police officers, gun stores, and barricaded houses are all places you can find the M625 and it's respective ammo type. Decently accurate and damaging, the main drawbacks are its slower firing speed and loudness, being able to attract zombies up to 70 tiles away. unlike the M36, the M625 as well as the magnum can have either an iron sight or red dot sight attachment. A decent middle of the road option for revolvers

Magnum - The Magnum is an unfortunate case. I tried to like it and use it, but it's just not viable or worth it. The first problem is that the Magnum fires .44 Magnum bullets. While that alone doesn't sound bad at all, but it changes everything when you realize boxes of .44 magnum bullets only contain 12 bullets per box. Since the magnum only holds 6 rounds, this about 2 full reloads of the gun per ammo box. Compare this to the M625 and M36, which have 30 rounds from each of their ammo boxes and can fully reload a total of 5 and 6 times respectively from each. So with ammo being an issue, you'd think that the damage would balance that out, right? Nope! Despite having a high range it also has low accuracy, and a hitting shot from a magnum, despite the damage, still can't guarantee a kill on a zombie 100% of the time. From personal experience, you could easily get out a full cylinder and a half of shots out from an M36 in the same time that you can empty the cylinder in the magnum. I avoid magnums like the plague once I have one for the sake of having one.

M9 Pistol - Out of the magazine-fed guns, this is the most well rounded of the bunch. With 15 round magazine capacity, the ability to fit multiple attachments including laser sights, and a somewhat fast firing speed, the M9 is a good jack of all trades weapon that's a very good pick to take with you if you don't have a preferred sidearm once you get the aiming skill. Of course, with the magazine-fed weapons comes their own drawbacks. Magazine-fed guns can jam, you'll have to account for the weight of magazines, and you'll also have to reload your magazines as well, making sure all your magazines are full so that you don't reload into an empty mag when you really, really don't want to. 9mm is easily one of if not the most common ammo type in the game, however given that each box is enough to fill only two magazines you may find yourself quickly running out of 9mm if you're a bit trigger happy. The M9 is also quiet, drawing zombies from only 50 tiles with every shot.

M1911 Pistol - The M1911 is the middle of the road option for Magazine-fed pistols. With 7 round magazine capacity, The M1911 can load up a total of 4 Magazines from a single box of .45 auto ammo. The M1911 is where my contention with the damage bar on guns really becomes apparent. It's most notable pistols, but to me the damage bar is more like a suggestion as there are so many more factors that go into shooting a zombie dead rather than just raw power. Speed, distance, range and accuracy are the big contributing factors to this and the biggest issue with the M1911 is the speed. It shoots markedly slower than the M9 and due to the low magazine size you're also going to be spending a lot more time reloading. Surprisingly and against my personal experience, the wiki states that the M1911 has the same loudness as the M9 at 50 tiles. The M1911 can equip the same attachments, including the laser sight.

D-E Pistol - A weapon that has pretty much all the negatives of the magnum while also being capable of jamming and suffering even worse from the low amount of .44 magnum ammo per box? Hard pass. The few times I've used this gun I've never had a good experience with it. If you want to use it or if you like it, more power to you but it's a hard pass from me.

Preface - You should have an aiming skill of 5 or higher if you want to use rifles.


Summary: Don't use the MSR700 or MSR788. Ever. The bolt action rifles are basically useless. They have the same noise level as shotguns but can only kill at maximum 2-3 zombies when they are perfectly lined up (which almost never happens in the way for the penetration), and have a very slow fire rate.

Another downside is that it also makes .223 exist, and .223 is a worthless ammo since it's only used in the garbage MSR700 rifle, so whenever it spawns it just means that it potentially took the place of a far more useful ammo type like .38, .308, or 9mm. The only reason i'd ever imagine where anyone uses these is if they are playing pvp and want a long range kill on another player.

The other two rifles, the M14 and M16, are much, much better weapons.

M14:
The M14 is excellent due to the huge magazine size, high amounts of ammo from boxes of .308, high damage, somewhat fast firerate, easy availability, and high accuracy. It does require an aiming skill of at least 5 to use effectively though (in my experience).

M16:
The M16 is just the M14 but with selective fire and a larger magazine. The full auto isn't as useful or fast as you think, but it's still a very useful and cool weapon to have. The main downsides are the extreme rarity (only ever found a single one in march ridge, been playing since rosewood was a new town), the ammo being less common, the high rate of jamming, low durability, and the high aiming skill required (at least over 6 aiming needed). Unfortunately, the M16 is more of a curiosity than anything due to the extreme rarity.


Personal verdict: Use the M14 once you have at least level 5 in aiming, it's really fun but you'll still need to bring multiple magazines. Avoid the bolt action rifles like the plague. Use the M16 if you have very high aiming skills and want to have some fun (if you can even find one).


Since B42 has been out and the aiming system is completely different, I've decided to just put my thoughts on the rifles here and nothing else.

WIP WIP WIP

Thanks for bothering to read my rambling and likely grammar error filled nonsense that you hopefully got something out of. I'll update this with more tips if I feel like it.