Project Z: Traits, Skills, Survival and the Radio Station

Project Z is the big overhaul underneath the whole server. It changes how your character grows, adds new survival needs, new zombies and bosses, and a new layer of contracts and crafting. This guide explains each part and how to use it.

Your character: the new skill tabs

Open your skills screen and you'll find four tabs on top of the normal attributes.

Self Traits

Your character has personal positive and negative traits, and no skill points are spent here. Each trait has a counter, and you level it (or get rid of it) by doing the thing it describes.

• Positive traits you can grow: Genius (read books and magazines), Athletic Build (run, jump, train), Bodybuilder (carry heavy loads, power attack), Courage (fight with 7+ zombies around you), Charismatic (finish trader quests), Lucky Guy (kill zombies), Jack of All Trades (butcher carcasses), Experienced Hunter (light melee headshot kills), Crusher (heavy melee headshot kills), Cold Mind (push through stress), Veteran of the Wasteland (kill bosses and mini-bosses), Schumacher (drive), Team Player (play in a group), Clean Freak (stay clean).
• Negative traits you can shed: Dementia, Obesity, Dystrophy, Alarmism, Brittle Bones, Weakling, Allergy Sufferer, Clumsy, Pacifist, Fear of the Dark, Fear of Animals, Fear of Zombies, Fear of Fire, Fear of Pain, Social Phobia, Unlucker and Slob. Each one tells you how to wear it down, for example Fear of the Dark shrinks every second you spend out at night.
• Some negatives block a matching positive. Genius won't grow while you have Dementia, for example.
• A Reset Self Traits book re-rolls your traits (4 to 8 positive points, 6 to 14 negative). There is no guarantee the new roll is better.
• There is also a hardcore challenge that resets your progress and sets every negative trait to level 3. Once you start it you can't undo it, so read the warning carefully.

Passive Skills

These also cost no skill points. They level up from what you do:

• Weapon Expert: kills with each weapon type (sniper, shotgun, automatic, pistol, bow, turret, heavy melee, light melee), up to 25 levels each.
• Dead Hunt: total kills, night kills, headshots, ranged kills, melee kills and elite kills.
• Boss Expert: 15 bosses, each with its own 10-level perk that grows as you kill that boss (Devourer, Nagaina, Gargul, Bear Daddy, Bitch, Mystic, Burning Flesh, Cholera, Bull, Hot Harry, Mummy, Shocker, Veteran, Ancient Yeti, Carrier).
• Adaptation: time spent in each biome makes you better at surviving there.
• Self Development, Resource Gathering, Armor and Superiority: learning, looting, zombie expertise, self-medication, metabolism, carrying, mining, recycling, butchering, farming, armour handling, health, stamina, speed and combat power.

Master skills

Once a crafting skill reaches level 75 or 100, you can craft Master magazines for it. Reading them raises the quality of what you make and unlocks advanced mods, stations and tools. There are master lines for armour, building, chemistry, every weapon class, demolition, electrics, farming, cooking, robotics, tools, traps, vehicles and workstations.

Perfection

An advanced attribute: as you rank it, traders recognise you and give you better buying and selling prices.

Survival needs

Project Z adds meters that the base game doesn't have. Each one has three stages (weak, moderate, severe), and the effects get worse as you go down.

• Hygiene: getting dirty slows wound recovery, shortens good buffs and raises your chance of catching an infection. Wash in a shower or bath, or use wipes (wet wipes can also clean other players).
• Stress: being around the dead wears on you, cutting melee damage and loot quality and raising weapon spread and food and water use. A good bed and comfort food bring it back.
• Fatigue (Strength Reserve): hard work drains it, lowering stamina regeneration, mobility and carry capacity. Rest in a bed to recover. The better the bed, the faster you recover.
• Radiation: radiated zones and elite zombies build radiation on you. Anti-radiation pills, Irradiated Shell stims and radiation-resist gear protect you, and washing helps you recover.
• Diseases and poisoning: infections, dysentery, allergies and poison each have their own cure. Hospital beds heal you and help you resist infection.

Zombies and bosses

• Elites (tier 4) hit hard and carry rare mutation samples. On this server they begin appearing around gamestage 250 and reach full numbers at gamestage 500.
• Mini-bosses can guard buildings from gamestage 364.
• 15 bosses roam the harder biomes at night and deep in the wasteland. Each has its own gimmick, like the Mystic, who stays unseen until you hit it and can paralyse you.
• Depleted Uranium ammo ignores armour and passes through up to 3 targets. It's made for the big mutants.

Contracts and quests

Project Z adds its own quest lines on top of the trader jobs:

• Supply contracts: food, medicine, ammo, books, repairs, armour, construction, workstations and vehicle parts, each in several tiers.
• Weapon Enthusiast contracts: one for each weapon type.
• Stupid Bets: five one-off story quests from survivors. Each one pays 1 skill point and a small permanent bonus.
• Rare Contracts: permanent upgrades to health, stamina, jump strength, mobility, hidden strike, and damage by biome or weapon type.
• Legendary Contracts: hunts for mutation samples from mini-bosses and bosses.
• Boss Hunts: a "Hunting for..." contract for each of the 15 bosses.

Notes: survivors leave notes in books. Collect Quest Notes to launch a tier 3+ quest of your choice. Collect Magazine Notes and you can craft an extra skill point. On this server, each skill-point magazine gives 5 skill points when you read it.

The Radio Station and expeditions

The Radio Station (a level 3 workstation) is your line to the outside world. From it you can:

• Trade resource sets for rare alloys (Ultra-Strength, Ultra-Light and Experimental).
• Swap support kits for rare medicines.
• Pick up mini-boss and boss hunt requests once your Zombie Expert skill is high enough.
• Create tier 3 quests and send expeditions (Reconnaissance, Activity, Infection Foci and Deadzone) once you have the Daring Adventurer perk. Expeditions run in the background and come back with reward sets. The Organizer skill makes them faster and more likely to succeed.

Crafting extras

• Recycler: a workstation that breaks down household and industrial items into large amounts of resources and rare parts.
• Universal parts: break down weapons, tools and armour into universal parts and use them to craft new gear.
• Ammo upgrades: upgrade standard ammo into better versions for the difference in cost.
• Unique weapons (tier 6): built from Unique Parts. Each comes with a random special property.
• Elixirs: permanent small boosts to health, stamina or damage. On this server they're capped at +100 health or stamina and +10% damage per line.
• Set meals (lunches): big food buffs that raise an attribute, a biome skill and loot bonuses for a while.
• Stimulants: short experimental effects, like Equilibrium (can't be knocked down) and Clear Gaze (no vision effects).
• Magazine boosters: raise the chance of finding a particular magazine for an hour.
• Backpack: you get 60 inventory slots.

What The Loot Lounge changes

We tune Project Z so it stays fair on a public server:

• Top-tier gear is level-gated: tier 4 "Imp" weapons and armour need level 100, and tier 5 weapons and unique bundles need level 150.
• Boss crates only give legendary and unique gear at matching loot stages, and legendary quality 6 rolls stay rare.
• XP boosters and Dead Hunt bonuses are trimmed, and Project Z's XP-bonus perks are roughly halved, so levelling doesn't snowball.
• The Hellgun and Gaus sniper are toned down.
• Stupid Bets and boss contracts can't be repeated for endless skill points.
• Elite and mini-boss spawns are paced to player level, as described above.