Staying Alive

Overview

How to survive Day 1. Help for new players or anyone finding it tough to get through thier first day.

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Hello and welcome to Stay Alive: Apocalypse!
This is going to be a quick guide for anyone that is new or having trouble actually staying alive.
I’m going to go through what I do on my first day in game. Normally I have no problems making it to the second day or beyond.
Now feel free to tweak these idea and suggestions to best suit your needs.

Creating your character

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Picking your Character:
So this is the character screen. It might seem a bit overwhelming at first but once you under stand it, things make sense.

The top left of the screen we have the name. I always suggest picking a custom name. If your game saves it will be under this name and if the game has an update that requires a new game always switch names (for now).

Under this we have the professions. These have bonuses and special abilities to make life easier or give an advantage. For your first playthrough (or people having a rough time) we are going to select “Teacher”.
Why teacher? Well Teacher gives us 50 extra skill points to build our character, the ability to learn skills from NPCs (so increase our shooting, cooking ect). We also start with a backpack (6 inventory slots), pencil and a note book (which come in handy after day 1).
Lastly my favorite ability, Once a day you can craft an item without meeting the requirements (like being a thief). This is AMAZING!! We can craft just about anything with this. Only downside is we have to live another day but we will.

Under the characters you will see dificulty, for now we will pick boring. Boring will alow us to get familiar with the in game crafting, looting, building and exploring. There will still be plenty of zombies they just won’t run after you as fast as a cheetah. Feel free to up the dificulty in another new game once you feel this one is “boring”.

Now in the middle we have our stats. Now once we set these they stay that way. Later on in new games you will want to compliment your character and traits wil your stats, such as having a postman (Increases sprint) having high agility and a trait that alows you to sprint fast. You would also focus on you portage (Carry wieght) and strength (Stamina recovery & portage) so you don’t have a fast but extremely weak character.
There is no point in being able to sprint like the flash and waiting 20 mins to recover your stamina.

So today we will be focusing on survival.

We will increase our intelligence to 13 (we will be picking the genius perk and it requires 13 intelligence)
Metabolism to 12 (This helps us with exploring so we aren’t always hungry and thirsty)
Strength to 12 (Helps with stamina recover and carry wieght)
Agility to 12 (Sprint speed mainly)
Ability t0 11 (Reading books, upgrading, reapairing, and crafting time decreases with every point)

Now feel free to mix and match but this is what helps me (and will probably change as time goes on. I’m still learning too).

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On to the traits:

We will be picking up Genius (Decreases crafting requirements %25 and gives +25 to mechanical skill)
Cold Blooded (This keeps us from getting illness like fever, which make you move like turtle and helps with deppression which my character gets all the time)
Last we will grab Paranoid (Hiding +25, and we start with a buulet proof vest, a trap, and an AK-47 YES an AK-47 I KNOW AWESOME RIGHT!!)

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So now on to the Skills!!

Now you’ll see our mechanical, hiding and deppression all got a nice bump and we have 75 points to use!!

So first lets get our mechanical to 60. This will allow us to upgrade our front door (and back if you have one), windows, and fridge/stove. We will also be able to fix light switches to run off a battery (Cell) and generator giving us light at night.
Now lets put the lockpicking to 30 helping use get into other houses or apartments.
Bump up Hiding to 50 (Keeps the zombies line of sight down on us)
Get Portage up to 35 so we can carry heavier items like small engines.
Weapon hit up to 35 this helps do more damage and keeps the recoil down.
Handiness to 35 decreasing the time it takes to break items, reading, really anything that takes time to do.
Bump our zombie resisitence to 25 (takes longer to turn)
Healing to 25 (Quicker bandaging , slower bleeding and a little boost to meds)
First Aid to 25 (more effects from vitamins and our ability to heal illness)
Sickness resistence to 25
Cold Resistence to 25 incase we get caught in the rain.

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Now again feel free to use the points how you feel. This is just to get you past day 1 (and many more).

Pick your spawn

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We have to pick where we want to start. I have tried all the starting point and reall like Guzel Dag.

There are a good amount of apartments, the weather is mild and a lot of good places to get gear.

Now I do pick starting in an apartment because this offer more places to loot in a closer vicinity so we don’t have to trek through zombies to get gear.
On this screen you can also include a couple of NPCs to spawn with you but for now we will be going solo.
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The Beginning

Lets Stay Alive!!
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Now your start will differ from mine but the ideas will be valid.

Step one: WATER
Step two: FOOD
Step three: LIGHT
Step four: Protection

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We will need water. I like to go around to the other apartments turning on all the bathtubs. Now there is a chance that you will spawn in to apartments that have showers instead.

Honestly I would just restart, water in bathtubs is just to important for day one to go around looking for bathtubs in a different building.

One bathtub can provide you enough water for a long time. So if we can get multiple we just increase our survival.
**After the recent patch you will need a plug to hold the water in a bathtub. With the characteer build in this guide you will be able to craft a plug. You will need cotton, thread, rags, and box tape. Cotton is usually found in the bathrooms (You may need to search several). Thread and rags come from breaking down clothes. You can craft box tape with plastic, just break down the shoe rack or step ladders. I have also found plugs in the airdrop boxes so keep an eye out for those.

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So get the tub filling up and take a look around your apartment. We need to decide if this is where we want set up our shelter. I look for a fridge, stove, decent bed and room to set up my crafting items (Recyler, crafting table ect).

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This place looks good, I have a bathtub, fridge and working stove (for now) and plenty of room for my crafting items. We shall call this home. Hit “B” and set shelter.
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Now I go looking for better clothes. Now one thing I want to point out (my favorite part of this game) is we don’t need to horde all our itms in the inventory.

This is our home so we can place items on tables and counters. We need to upgrade our inventory space and leave it free at the shelter. When we go looting we don’t want to be clogged up with items we found at our own shelter.

Clothing and Loot in the shelter

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For instance I found this backpack and it is much better for looting. If we look at the number on the bottom (7) and the number next to our current backpack (4) we can see that the 7 is much better for looting.

7 allows us to hold much bigger items so we don’t have to use “E” to carry them.
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But I will keep this old backpack for storage.
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Looking at our inventory I see we have a bullet proof vest, great for armour but not looting so we need to drop this for now and grab a jacket or coat. Do be careful and keep an eye on your temperature if you equip a Heavy or Thick coat, sometimes the inventory space is not worth your temp goin up.

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Here I have the option of 3 different coats, a White coat, Thick Coat and a Topcoat. First I check to see what offers more slots.

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The topcoat did and it had better bonuses for cold and armour. Now I just have to watch my body temp to make sure it is not to much warmth.

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At the monent I will be fine as you can see the temp I’m at is well below the danger mark.

Now that my gear is good enough to loot with I will take inventory of what is in my shelter.

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Looking through drawers and cabinets then placing the items on tables or counters so I can see what I have. After this I need to start thinking about night time.

It will get dark and very hard to see so I will want to craft a Torch if I don’t find a flashligh or a helmet with a light in it.
Looking at my crafting menu under Survival I see a torch requires wood and matches/lighter. These will be priority number 1.

So I did a quick inventory of what my shelter had. Water? Check. Food? Check. Light? Nope. Potection? Nope.
So I have about half of what I need. This means I have to go to the other apartments to do this.

Getting Loot

Before I leave though my CASUT needs to be as full as it can. Looks like my food and water are low. My sleep is low but I will wait until tonight to fill it.

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All filled up, lets go!

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So I have another apartment just across the hall, very nice!

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Now when I get to the door I have some options. I could just pick the lock and go in but I think “E”, listening, is the better option.

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This can tell me if there are zombies I might have to deal with or other survivors. Lets see what it says.

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It says “No sound from inside but I’m not sure”. This sounds promising. Lets check it out.

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Looks clear! Most of the time if there are zombies you will hear them when you walk in but just incase use the windows on doors or quickly open and close a door to check.
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Now we will do the same think we did in our shelter. Water, Food, Light, Protection.

You can use chest, buckets, backpacks and other objects to hold your loot. Don’t waste your inventory space when you can caryy (E) and place items inside chest and crates.

The goodies

So I went through a total of 3 other apartments and gathered this:
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As you can see we are in very good shape. Water? 4 bathtubs!! Food? Check. Light? We have matches and a lighter!! Protection? We found a golf club, machine gun and rounds for a shotgun and .22 rounds!!

I also came across Cell batteries which work for light switches, so lets get some materials and fix them up.

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Quick note if you come accross lamps, take them. They work on the cell batteries and provide a good amount of light.

End of day 1

I went back to the first apartment we looted and broke down all the thing that I did not need like the TV, fridge, stove, radio and eventually everything. That is what I usually do at night, break down all the furnishings I don’t want.

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Now we fix up the shelter and make it livable.Need a better front door and lighting.
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Nice the overhead light works.

Made myself a torch just incase the battery runs out. We are looking good!!
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For the rest of day one we will just be arranging the loot and gathering more materials by breaking down what we don’t need.
I will stay awake until my sleep indicator is almost completely depleted. It takes about 4 hours of sleep to refill. Also make sure your food and water is full before going to sleep.

Thats it for day 1. This will give you a strong base to start your game. The shelter has everything you need to live on for at least 4 days. Of course that would be very dull and boring but it makes it so when you go out looting other buildings there is no pressure. You can avoid zombies and loot at ease.

If you guys liked this I can make a guide on looting other buildings and dealing with zombies. If you have anything to add just throw it down below.

Thanks for looking!

Stay Alive: Apocalypse Guide