Gameplay

General gameplay
The player plays the role of a survivor of a catastrophic event that killed almost all mankind. Staying alive is challenging as resources are rare and zombies attack on sight. Gathering food and drink, searching for or crafting better weapons, armor and equipment and eventually build a stronghold is the main goal.

The game offers PvE and PvP servers for players to join. On PvE servers players cant hurt each and is geared towards solo or cooperative play. On PvP servers only safezones provide reliable protection from the hostile environment and other players.

Movement and controls
The game follows standard WASD keyboard and mouse control. Keys can be customized. Left mouse fires or swings the currently equipped weapon. Right mouse activates aim mode ( for ranged weapons ). SPACE key makes the character jump, SHIFT key activates sprint. With CTRL the character crouches and Y-key lets the player go prone.

Zombies detect nearby players depending on the type of movement. While sprinting, zombies notice the player over a great distance while prone players are only detected at very close range.

The E-key is used to interact with game objects the player is looking at like loot, resource nodes, structures, etc.

R-key is used to reload the currently equipped weapon.

Health, Hunger and Thirst, Death
While not in a safe zone, the players food and water levels will constantly fall and eventually the player will starve and die. To prevent this, several sources of food and drink can be found in the world.

Different types of food and drink will increase different amounts of hunger and thirst, depending on the type and if food is cooked or raw. Natural water sources provide only dirty water which can be purified. Clean water has no negative effects ad heal a larger amount of thirst than dirty water. Empty bottles can be filled at water sources and purified with purification tablets or sterilized at a fireplace.

Uncooked canned food, vegetables and raw meat can be cooked and then heal a larger amount of hunger. Some food and drink can also heal the players hitpoints, stamina, desease level. etc. while some have a negative side effect too.

Health drops if the player is hit by a zombie or a hostile player, by poison, desease, infection or starvation. If the players health is depleted, he dies. Upon death, all inventory including is dropped. The player is then presented with a respawn menu where he can choose a respawn point. Nearest Safe Zone and a random point in the vicinity are always available. Additional choices depend on if the player was in a party, owns a base or has a sleeping bag deployed in a base.

The dropped inventory remains in the world in a "loot bag" for a short time which is free to loot for all. After the time expires the bag disappears and the items are lost.

Knowledge learned from reading plans remains and is not lost upon death. The player respawns with health, food and thirst level at 50%, a 12 slot school bag and a flashlight. Its advisable to find a better backpack quickly if the player wants to try to recover his dropped loot bag contents. The loot bag itself cannot be picked up.