Curious about the Best Project Zomboid Builds? That’s a difficult question! As you may know in your extensive research, everyone online has an opinion about which builds are the best in Project Zomboid. It makes sense as to why, the game has an intense character creator with a ton of options. Without knowing what’s good or bad you can make some huge mistakes when creating your character. But thankfully, we at GamerJournalist have done the heavy lifting for you.
What are Occupations
When you go to make your first character you will need to choose an Occupation. Essentially this is going to be what your character was prior to the zombie outbreak. Each Occupation gives a different advantage and disadvantage to survival. This is a very important choice in the creation process because previous experience with a skill will allow your growth in that skill to be faster. A quick example is starting as a Carpenter, they’ll learn carpentry a lot faster than a Police Officer.
Related: Project Zomboid – How to Get Tarp
These are all the available Occupations:
| Occupation | Skills | Traits |
| Burger Flipper | +2 Cooking +1 Maintenance +1 Short Blade | Cook |
| Burglar | +2 Light footed +2 Nimble +2 Sneaking | Burglar |
| Carpenter | +3 Carpentry +1 Short Blunt | – |
| Chef | +3 Cooking +1 Maintenance +1 Short Blade | Chef |
| Construction Worker | +1 Carpentry +3 Short Blunt | – |
| Doctor | +3 First Aid +1 Short Blade | – |
| Electrician | +3 Electrical | – |
| Engineer | +1 Carpentry +1 Electrical | – |
| Farmer | +3 Farming | – |
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| Fire Officer | +1 Axe +1 Fitness +1 Sprinting +1 Strength | – |
| Fisherman | +3 Fishing +1 Foraging | – |
| Fitness Instructor | +3 Fitness +2 Sprinting | Nutritionist |
| Lumberjack | +2 Axe +1 Strength | Axe Man |
| Mechanic | +3 Mechanics +1 Short Blunt | Amateur Mechanic |
| Metalworker | +3 Metalworking | – |
| Nurse | +2 First Aid +1 Light footed | – |
| Park Ranger | +1 Axe +1 Carpentry +2 Foraging +2 Trapping | – |
| Police Officer | +3 Aiming +1 Nimble +2 Reloading | – |
| Repairman | +1 Carpentry +2 Maintenance +1 Short Blunt | – |
| Security Guard | +1 Light footed +2 Sprinting | Night Owl |
| Unemployed | – | – |
| Veteran | +2 Aiming +2 Reloading | Desensitized |
What are Traits
Traits are going to be positive and negative modifiers that a character can have. An Occupation can put a character in the negatives which will give you points back to invest to either be in the negative still or at 0. Potentially a character can be all negative traits! Traits categorized as “Mutually Exclusive” cannot be taken simultaneously (e.g. Choosing “Deaf” cannot be taken with “Hard of Hearing” or “Keen Hearing” too).
As you play the game your character can gain and lose traits which all depend on what you do. If you eat too much food, somehow, in the apocalypse. Your character will become “Overweight”.
These are all the available Traits:
Positive Traits
| Name | Points |
| Adrenaline Junkie | -8 |
| Athletic | -10 |
| Brave | -4 |
| Cat’s Eyes | -2 |
| Dexterous | -2 |
| Eagle Eyed | -6 |
| Fast Healer | -6 |
| Fast Learner | -6 |
| Fast Reader | -2 |
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| Fit | -4 |
| Graceful | -4 |
| Inconspicuous | -4 |
| Iron Gut | -3 |
| Keen Hearing | -6 |
| Light Eater | -4 |
| Low Thirst | -6 |
| Lucky | -4 |
| Organized | -6 |
| Outdoorsman | -2 |
| Resilient | -4 |
| Speed Demon | -1 |
| Stout | -6 |
| Strong | -10 |
| Thick Skinned | -8 |
| Wakeful | -2 |
Negative Skills
| Name | Points |
| Agoraphobic | +4 |
| All Thumbs | +2 |
| Asthmatic | +5 |
| Claustrophobic | +4 |
| Clumsy | +2 |
| Conspicuous | +4 |
| Cowardly | +2 |
| Deaf | +12 |
| Disorganized | +4 |
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| Emaciated | – |
| Feeble | +6 |
| Hard of Hearing | +4 |
| Hearty Appetite | +4 |
| Fear of Blood | +5 |
| High Thirst | +6 |
| Illiterate | +8 |
| Out of Shape | +6 |
| Obese | +10 |
| Overweight | +6 |
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| Pacifist | +4 |
| Prone to Illness | +4 |
| Restless Sleeper | +6 |
| Short Sighted | +2 |
| Sleepyhead | +4 |
| Smoker | +4 |
| Slow Healer | +6 |
| Slow Learner | +6 |
| Slow Reader | +2 |
| Sunday driver | +1 |
| Thin-skinned | +8 |
| Underweight | +6 |
| Unfit | +10 |
| Unlucky | +4 |
| Very Underweight | +10 |
| Weak | +10 |
| Weak Stomach | +3 |
What are Skills
Skills are abilities your character has learned on their journey. When you are making your character they will get positives and negatives to their overall skills. Bonuses in any RPG are important to the overall strength and variety of your character. Doctors and nurses can get bonuses to First-Aid. Carpenters gets a bonus to Carpentry! A Chef will have a cooking bonus. You get the idea. As your character lives on in the world and does their tasks they will gain EXP within that skill, so the more you use it the better it gets.
Skills are grouped into five categories: agility, combat, crafting, firearm and survivalist. There’s also a passive skill tree containing: fitness and strength.
These are all the available Skills:
Agility
- Sprinting
- Light footed
- Nimble
- Sneaking
Combat
- Axe
- Long Blunt
- Short Blunt
- Long Blade
- Short Blade
- Spear
- Maintenance
Crafting
- Carpentry
- Cooking
- Farming
- First Aid
- Electrical
- Metalworking
- Mechanics
- Tailoring
Firearm
- Aiming
- Reloading
Survivalist
- Fishing
- Trapping
- Foraging
Passives
- Strength
- Fitness
The Best Builds
Now that you understand what goes into a build and how it all works, we’ll show you a complete build. These are very simple builds that can be tweaked as you see fit!
The Lumberjack
- Occupation: Lumberjack
- Traits: Gardener, Graceful, Inconspicuous, Light Eater, Lucky, Nutritionist, Resilient, Sewer, Amateur Mechanic, Gymnast, and Brawler
- Chosen Traits: Overweight, Smoker, Outdoors-man, Brave, and Runner.
- Major Skills: Axe, Fitness, Sprinting, and Strength.
The Fisherman
- Occupation: Fisherman
- Traits: Cat’s Eyes, Dexterous, Fast Reader, Wakeful, Iron Gut, Angler, Baseball Player, Brave, First Aider, Gardener, and Graceful.
- Chosen Traits: Hard of Hearing, Pacifist, Outdoors-man, and Inconspicuous.
- Major Skills: Fishing, Fitness, Foraging, and Strength.
Project Zomboid may be one of the toughest zombie survival games ever made, but it’s definitely not the only tough zombie survival game ever made. If you feel like you’ve already played Project Zomboid more times than you can count, try checking out Gamer Journalist’s guides for DayZ or The Last of Us. These games are just as tough, if not tougher, than Project Zomboid; you definitely won’t be getting bored with them anytime soon!
