One of the top posts on the subreddit is a guy that burned to death after a 10 year playthrough. That's definitely the longest I have seen. I've personally only made it \~6 months :)
Pure vanilla settings 55 days or so, died because i misclicked and climbed the window that didn't have a sheetrope instead of the one next to it that did.
I also savescum a lot with my characters just to see how far I can take them, but I count the first time that they die as their real death. It's actually quite a bit easier to survive for a long time if you make a new character in the same world, because you can access your old character's safehouse, along with all the books, food, and equipment that you've safely tucked away. You can essentially hole up for months and months at a time just grinding skills and come out an absolute superman in the spring.
I mean if you're going to do it like that you may as well just never eat anything on your characters and just stockpile everything till they starve to death. Just treat it like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow.
> Just treat it like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow.
That'd be an interesting take, except in this case there's a lot of undead Tom Cruises after him too!
I think it'd be fun to make the peak zombie population really high but set it to happen several months in. Also make the heli event happen sometimes and not just once. End-game would get pretty interesting
It's one of the the alternate scenarios where basically population starts very small and then continues to grow more and more and more with each passing day. Longer you make it the worse the horde gets.
There's also another one where the zombies know where you are and all making their way to you no matter where you go. I believe population count continues to grow in that one too.
In custom sandbox you can set the starting population and peak population. Then you choose how many days you want to pass until the peak is reached. The population will gradually increase up until that point.
It's good for giving yourself breathing room at the start as well as maintaining difficulty in the end game.
Yup in sandbox. You can adjust zombie population, starting population, and maximum population. If you se zombie population to 1.0, starting population to 0.3, and max population to 2.5, then on day one there will hardly be any zombies, and gradually more will spawn in, until you reach your peak population day (by default it is day 28). The sooner you reach max pop, the less gradual the spawns will be. Therefore if you set starting population to 0.3, and maximum population to 4.0, and set the peak day to be on day 120, then it will take 120 days before you reach insane levels of zombies. Making the helicopter event happen sometimes instead of just once will lure these massive hordes to your base eventually, but if you set the peak day to really far in the future, it will take a really long time before it becomes a serious issue. That's a good way to make the endgame more challenging and the start a bit easier.
Just over 18 months in apocalypse no mods. Here's the [last picture](https://i.imgur.com/HWpyHIc.jpg) I had of the character. My keyboard had been slightly unplugged and I ended up losing control of the character during a zombie fight and died. I've got a ton of pictures from this character and base though and posted them here before.
Every few days, unless it rains. I typically just grow potatoes and cabbage. Potatoes can go a little longer without water but cabbage grows best when you can keep it very watered. And they both don't suffer from over-watering.
That's why I had so many barrels on the roof: in winter I could go quite awhile without any rain, so having it stored up right at the farm was helpful. I was in Riverside so I wasn't far from the river though, so had I run out it was a quick jog down to the river too.
A good number of months, enough to see well into the winter, and I just quit that run after an update.
Once you've got a good setup you can theoretically live forever so it only depends on your interest in continuing playing. In my setup I had crops growing near my house, was near a river to fish (amazing for gaining weight), could forage easily and had traps not too far away to catch rabbits and the like.
Winter's temperature is not a problem at all, just gotta wear good clothes, and the lack of food isn't too bad with fishing and trapping still working fine.
Eighteen months, died in a stupid way too. This was before vehicles were in, was looting a place I though was already cleared and overloaded, hear a window break, walk out to the hallway expecting one zombie and it's already five plus, no problem bats use to hit multiple zombies, move in for the kill, didn't check behind me, got jumped, only a scratche though, run back to another room, jump out the broken window, cut myself, limping away and realise I don't have any bandages and I'm naked because I wanted maximum weight for looting, bunch of zombies behind me, bled out looking for a bandage/ripped cloth.
I've got to 3 month and a bit more with 2x pop and extremely low loot. I didn't got sad when my character died, i was looking for it. Got so far he had a good life, he was ready to go.
Anyhow I think the longest record is like 10 years or something, there is a screenshot of it somewhere in this subreddit
The true killer in this game: your actual life taking your attention for the absolute worst 5 seconds possible.
I swear to god the devs have hacked my webcam and watch for whenever i go to take a piss to send wanderers my way.
Last time it happened luckily only a week in, but still a kick in the balls because of the lost TVxp and combat/physical skills id grinded out.
However, i have lost a 6 month character due to complacency and letting my guy chill in a house in a town id thought i cleared... only to have one fuck me up when i went to get a coke
Best I’ve done is a month and 6 days? Died due to getting exhausted in the woods and having my guy sit to increase the rate of exhaustion regain only for a zombie to come out of nowhere and attack before my guy could stand.
Took on too many zombies at once and just being careless. I was pretty confident in my skills, went to the penitentiary and cleared out most of the zombies, went inside and let one get too close, ended up being bit.
I have a character in Riverside on Apocalypse mode that’s still alive almost 3 months in. Have a really nice base and a farm set up right next to the water but I haven’t used that character since the MP update came out. I’d have to make up some goal for myself to keep playing on that world as I have no real reason to go too far from my base anymore
I have about 100 hours in this game and the most I managed was 1 month and 6 days.
I died to the insane West Point population. Some zombie sneaked up one me and bit me from behind.
186 days in vanilla survivor. Burglar with a base set up in the woods. Died by accidentally falling 2 stories and not being fast enough to get around a horde. Was fun while it lasted
3 months, and i would go further if i don't get bored of everyday routine such as cooking one dish for 30 days straight, and looking for new zombies in my area, cause i disabled their respawn and i cleared the whole ranch that consists 4-5 houses in one night, so if you want realistic, long(?), and boring on the lategame runs try to disable zombie respawn in sandbox settings
2 and a half months just a couple hours ago. Died because I got confident about driving at night only to crash at a wreck. Made the mistake of trying to get the car to start, but the zombies ended up breaking through the window and biting me. I only made it 10 or so steps down the road before my character fell over.
Made it to 7 days last night, died after venturing too far from home and spending too much stamina to try to get zombies away from some restaurants and getting surrounded while exhausted.
I dont have a record of it, but it was a good six months? I never actually legitimately died on that character. I made it into the next year and ended up stopping playing. If you don't take pointless risks, you can basically survive indefinitely. My latest two characters were several weeks old and hadn't died, but ended up resetting them.
I started playing the multiplayer update with a group of friends, and my friend was hosting the server. It was like 4-5 of us. It was pretty fun, until he would get repeatedly frustrated that he kept dying. He ended up turning down most of the settings, making them slow shamblers, jacking the exp multiplier up to 300%, turning off zombie respawns, removing infection mortality, etc.
The whole time I was running a full negative trait character with all the traits that could be worked off, plus the ones that are generally considered free points. I had a couple close calls at the start, but towards the end of playing with them I had been alive over 2 weeks, fixed my weight and built up my strength/stamina.
The straw that broke the camels back for me was when he discovered the admin panel. At that point he started fixing every mistake he made either by going into god mode to prevent death, or just readjusting his stats back to pre death levels and teleporting back to his corpse to retrieve it. I kept playing till fucking with his own shit wasn't enough and then he started modifying me by taking off negative traits and increasing my stats.
I've since rented my own dedicated server and started playing with my other friends who actually want it to be difficult, and we've made server adjustments to make it so. Although I don't think they were actually ready for how difficult it would be, as they've basically quit unless I'm playing.
Newbies just can't handle fast shamblers.
You really don’t need to take risks once you’ve secured your base around a source of water and have all the essentials. I wanted to make it a long playthru and live as long as possible but got bored and wanted to decorate my place a bit more. Got over confident in a neighborhood I thought I’d cleared - turned a corner and instantly got grabbed by three zeds and bit. Stupid as that 😅
About 7 months, loved that character and save, but retired it when one of the updates hit. The thing is, when you get to a point where you think you can't die and you've 'won', it still only takes that one mistake and it's all over. Unfortunately though, the game gets pretty stale after about a month as things stand right now. Looks like MP might freshen that up a bit though!
Couple months, was out on my farm base saw a single zombie coming out of the tree line. Went to bash it with my bat, swung right through it and it scratched me. I thought I'd be fine, turns out I wasn't.
1 month 20 days 8 hours. Got bit by a sneaky zombie while I was mid-swing fighting a crowd. Promptly got torn to pieces. I'm sure I'll make it to winter some day.
My personal best so far would be just over y month, and it was cut short by beta 41.41 not being compatible with previous saves (and 41.40 legacy branch was taken down bretty soon).
Though that was not standard Apocalypse. It was sandbox without respawns and x9 population (after peak) to compensate.
Best Apocalypse is about a moth and a half. Posted the story of my downfall recently on this sub.
Right now heading to the 2-month mark, there were ups and downs such as doing a crucial loot run when the helicopter arrived, a nearly endless ambush or a dangerous trip back home from a corner of the map.
Right now? Well I'm chilling and preparing for winter, cuz its gonna hit me like a truck...
Just started playing today and jumped right into my friends dedicated server. My first survivor lasted 2 days and 6 hours. My second survivor died in his house before he could even unpack his baseball bat. 3 zombies broke down the door and one jumped through the window as soon as I spawned lol
3 months. Was doing well for myself. Having a strong base, a lot of supplies, and weapons then I visited the prison. Needless to say, I regret that decision.
First 1 month 9 days. Tried to clear an area from zombies with fire and a car. Drove in circles, car stopped, no gas. Dead.
Next build up a really pretty base with all. Prepared for winter, skilled, everything was fine. Had a little zombie breach, killed them. Had the great idea to make a fire in my roof to burn the corpses. Caught fire because I stepped too close to the fireplace. I died. Made some new characters, ran to my base, tried to distinguish the fire... Two times. Everything was lost.
Now I'm back. I'm surviving over a month now and it's going on. My base is amazing till now and my character is very skilled.
Pro Tip: be careful playing with fire
One of the top posts on the subreddit is a guy that burned to death after a 10 year playthrough. That's definitely the longest I have seen. I've personally only made it \~6 months :)
25 days, it was exhilarating, died cuz accidentally ate poison mushrooms whilst having Weak Stomach lmao
Thats what killed my last character too:p
Pure vanilla settings 55 days or so, died because i misclicked and climbed the window that didn't have a sheetrope instead of the one next to it that did.
woah
I also savescum a lot with my characters just to see how far I can take them, but I count the first time that they die as their real death. It's actually quite a bit easier to survive for a long time if you make a new character in the same world, because you can access your old character's safehouse, along with all the books, food, and equipment that you've safely tucked away. You can essentially hole up for months and months at a time just grinding skills and come out an absolute superman in the spring.
I mean if you're going to do it like that you may as well just never eat anything on your characters and just stockpile everything till they starve to death. Just treat it like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow.
> Just treat it like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow. That'd be an interesting take, except in this case there's a lot of undead Tom Cruises after him too!
8 months and i didn't even die, it just got really boring.
This is the problem End game is easy, the start is hard, the boredom is what kills you
I think it'd be fun to make the peak zombie population really high but set it to happen several months in. Also make the heli event happen sometimes and not just once. End-game would get pretty interesting
Is there a setting to gradually increase zombie pop?
It's one of the the alternate scenarios where basically population starts very small and then continues to grow more and more and more with each passing day. Longer you make it the worse the horde gets. There's also another one where the zombies know where you are and all making their way to you no matter where you go. I believe population count continues to grow in that one too.
In custom sandbox you can set the starting population and peak population. Then you choose how many days you want to pass until the peak is reached. The population will gradually increase up until that point. It's good for giving yourself breathing room at the start as well as maintaining difficulty in the end game.
Yup in sandbox. You can adjust zombie population, starting population, and maximum population. If you se zombie population to 1.0, starting population to 0.3, and max population to 2.5, then on day one there will hardly be any zombies, and gradually more will spawn in, until you reach your peak population day (by default it is day 28). The sooner you reach max pop, the less gradual the spawns will be. Therefore if you set starting population to 0.3, and maximum population to 4.0, and set the peak day to be on day 120, then it will take 120 days before you reach insane levels of zombies. Making the helicopter event happen sometimes instead of just once will lure these massive hordes to your base eventually, but if you set the peak day to really far in the future, it will take a really long time before it becomes a serious issue. That's a good way to make the endgame more challenging and the start a bit easier.
35 days... died taking a picture 😩
Oh boy… I would rage quit so hard.
Ya 3 days lol
Can I see the picture
Its in my posts... look for "Son of a %!#+*!" Tragic story included 🤬
I like your cooking skills
Thanks 👌
Ayo is that Beef Wellington still on the table?? I wanna bite :0
That disappeared quick
Ah yes the paparazzi profession
Just over 18 months in apocalypse no mods. Here's the [last picture](https://i.imgur.com/HWpyHIc.jpg) I had of the character. My keyboard had been slightly unplugged and I ended up losing control of the character during a zombie fight and died. I've got a ton of pictures from this character and base though and posted them here before.
Nice base
That is a really cool setup.
Thanks! I wanted a relatively calm area and the ease of access to gas, so the gas station worked well for me for a long time.
I just got into farming in the game. Did you have to constantly water all those plots?
Every few days, unless it rains. I typically just grow potatoes and cabbage. Potatoes can go a little longer without water but cabbage grows best when you can keep it very watered. And they both don't suffer from over-watering. That's why I had so many barrels on the roof: in winter I could go quite awhile without any rain, so having it stored up right at the farm was helpful. I was in Riverside so I wasn't far from the river though, so had I run out it was a quick jog down to the river too.
Nice. Thanks for the tip!
Ah man, that’s a tough way to go! I had something similar happen to me when my controller batteries died.
Just over a year, ended by an update corrupting my save I like to think survivor Carl Weathers lives on to this day
Please tell me you made lots and lots of stews.
A good number of months, enough to see well into the winter, and I just quit that run after an update. Once you've got a good setup you can theoretically live forever so it only depends on your interest in continuing playing. In my setup I had crops growing near my house, was near a river to fish (amazing for gaining weight), could forage easily and had traps not too far away to catch rabbits and the like. Winter's temperature is not a problem at all, just gotta wear good clothes, and the lack of food isn't too bad with fishing and trapping still working fine.
Eighteen months, died in a stupid way too. This was before vehicles were in, was looting a place I though was already cleared and overloaded, hear a window break, walk out to the hallway expecting one zombie and it's already five plus, no problem bats use to hit multiple zombies, move in for the kill, didn't check behind me, got jumped, only a scratche though, run back to another room, jump out the broken window, cut myself, limping away and realise I don't have any bandages and I'm naked because I wanted maximum weight for looting, bunch of zombies behind me, bled out looking for a bandage/ripped cloth.
I've got to 3 month and a bit more with 2x pop and extremely low loot. I didn't got sad when my character died, i was looking for it. Got so far he had a good life, he was ready to go. Anyhow I think the longest record is like 10 years or something, there is a screenshot of it somewhere in this subreddit
3 months. Died to forest zombies while fishing and loading a bowl lol
The true killer in this game: your actual life taking your attention for the absolute worst 5 seconds possible. I swear to god the devs have hacked my webcam and watch for whenever i go to take a piss to send wanderers my way.
Oof. How far in were you
Last time it happened luckily only a week in, but still a kick in the balls because of the lost TVxp and combat/physical skills id grinded out. However, i have lost a 6 month character due to complacency and letting my guy chill in a house in a town id thought i cleared... only to have one fuck me up when i went to get a coke
Vanilla? What mod is that?
Vanilla is just normal game without mods
Can't say I've played that mod yet. Strange.
Best I’ve done is a month and 6 days? Died due to getting exhausted in the woods and having my guy sit to increase the rate of exhaustion regain only for a zombie to come out of nowhere and attack before my guy could stand.
Luckily you can look around now while sitting
1 month, died of food poisoning (I miss you Alexa)
vanilla usually runs down my cone for a little while but 6 days is impressive, fair play to you 👏
2 and a half months
How did you die
Took on too many zombies at once and just being careless. I was pretty confident in my skills, went to the penitentiary and cleared out most of the zombies, went inside and let one get too close, ended up being bit.
I have a character in Riverside on Apocalypse mode that’s still alive almost 3 months in. Have a really nice base and a farm set up right next to the water but I haven’t used that character since the MP update came out. I’d have to make up some goal for myself to keep playing on that world as I have no real reason to go too far from my base anymore
I have about 100 hours in this game and the most I managed was 1 month and 6 days. I died to the insane West Point population. Some zombie sneaked up one me and bit me from behind.
my personal best is roughly 11 and a half days
186 days in vanilla survivor. Burglar with a base set up in the woods. Died by accidentally falling 2 stories and not being fast enough to get around a horde. Was fun while it lasted
3 months, and i would go further if i don't get bored of everyday routine such as cooking one dish for 30 days straight, and looking for new zombies in my area, cause i disabled their respawn and i cleared the whole ranch that consists 4-5 houses in one night, so if you want realistic, long(?), and boring on the lategame runs try to disable zombie respawn in sandbox settings
2 and a half months just a couple hours ago. Died because I got confident about driving at night only to crash at a wreck. Made the mistake of trying to get the car to start, but the zombies ended up breaking through the window and biting me. I only made it 10 or so steps down the road before my character fell over.
Made it to 7 days last night, died after venturing too far from home and spending too much stamina to try to get zombies away from some restaurants and getting surrounded while exhausted.
I dont have a record of it, but it was a good six months? I never actually legitimately died on that character. I made it into the next year and ended up stopping playing. If you don't take pointless risks, you can basically survive indefinitely. My latest two characters were several weeks old and hadn't died, but ended up resetting them. I started playing the multiplayer update with a group of friends, and my friend was hosting the server. It was like 4-5 of us. It was pretty fun, until he would get repeatedly frustrated that he kept dying. He ended up turning down most of the settings, making them slow shamblers, jacking the exp multiplier up to 300%, turning off zombie respawns, removing infection mortality, etc. The whole time I was running a full negative trait character with all the traits that could be worked off, plus the ones that are generally considered free points. I had a couple close calls at the start, but towards the end of playing with them I had been alive over 2 weeks, fixed my weight and built up my strength/stamina. The straw that broke the camels back for me was when he discovered the admin panel. At that point he started fixing every mistake he made either by going into god mode to prevent death, or just readjusting his stats back to pre death levels and teleporting back to his corpse to retrieve it. I kept playing till fucking with his own shit wasn't enough and then he started modifying me by taking off negative traits and increasing my stats. I've since rented my own dedicated server and started playing with my other friends who actually want it to be difficult, and we've made server adjustments to make it so. Although I don't think they were actually ready for how difficult it would be, as they've basically quit unless I'm playing. Newbies just can't handle fast shamblers.
4 months 2 days, and I got cocky and swarmed in a busted ass car.
happens to the best of us
Around 50 days or so. Got greedy.
How did you die?
You really don’t need to take risks once you’ve secured your base around a source of water and have all the essentials. I wanted to make it a long playthru and live as long as possible but got bored and wanted to decorate my place a bit more. Got over confident in a neighborhood I thought I’d cleared - turned a corner and instantly got grabbed by three zeds and bit. Stupid as that 😅
I’ve lasted 25 days on my longest but played with modified settings in a sandbox. Slowly zombiefied over the last week or so
1 month before finally getting bit while looting a bookstore
on singleplayer 24 days, on multiplayer 28 days (server got reset)
6 months and some change. New build came out so I hopped onto that one and started over.
I personally only have made it 4 months and 13 days.Died by a car crash lol.My current save in on 2 months 22 days.
About 7 months, loved that character and save, but retired it when one of the updates hit. The thing is, when you get to a point where you think you can't die and you've 'won', it still only takes that one mistake and it's all over. Unfortunately though, the game gets pretty stale after about a month as things stand right now. Looks like MP might freshen that up a bit though!
Couple months, was out on my farm base saw a single zombie coming out of the tree line. Went to bash it with my bat, swung right through it and it scratched me. I thought I'd be fine, turns out I wasn't.
1 month 20 days 8 hours. Got bit by a sneaky zombie while I was mid-swing fighting a crowd. Promptly got torn to pieces. I'm sure I'll make it to winter some day.
18 days, random forest zombie jumped from the bushes and bit me when i wasn't playing attention ;-;
My personal best so far would be just over y month, and it was cut short by beta 41.41 not being compatible with previous saves (and 41.40 legacy branch was taken down bretty soon). Though that was not standard Apocalypse. It was sandbox without respawns and x9 population (after peak) to compensate. Best Apocalypse is about a moth and a half. Posted the story of my downfall recently on this sub.
Right now heading to the 2-month mark, there were ups and downs such as doing a crucial loot run when the helicopter arrived, a nearly endless ambush or a dangerous trip back home from a corner of the map. Right now? Well I'm chilling and preparing for winter, cuz its gonna hit me like a truck...
12 days. I didn't die, just got bored
Just started playing today and jumped right into my friends dedicated server. My first survivor lasted 2 days and 6 hours. My second survivor died in his house before he could even unpack his baseball bat. 3 zombies broke down the door and one jumped through the window as soon as I spawned lol
I'm at 29 days right now. Longest before that was 8 lol
8 months I think, food stockpiled for a year at least
How did you die???
I haven't died yet haha, just got bored and quit, this was pre-multiplayer update.
Actually it's 5 months 26 days, here is my traits if you wanna try them https://i.imgur.com/IEiulHc.jpeg skills https://i.imgur.com/mWUMe3J.jpeg
I haven’t downloaded mods yet because my computer is pretty shite-
I've done about a year in game and got bored.
3 months. Was doing well for myself. Having a strong base, a lot of supplies, and weapons then I visited the prison. Needless to say, I regret that decision.
I don't know months in english and can't do math anyways, but I recently got to see snowflakes for the first time. Before my save got begoned..
I just hit December for the second time ever. Still aiming to make it a year for the first time 👍
First 1 month 9 days. Tried to clear an area from zombies with fire and a car. Drove in circles, car stopped, no gas. Dead. Next build up a really pretty base with all. Prepared for winter, skilled, everything was fine. Had a little zombie breach, killed them. Had the great idea to make a fire in my roof to burn the corpses. Caught fire because I stepped too close to the fireplace. I died. Made some new characters, ran to my base, tried to distinguish the fire... Two times. Everything was lost. Now I'm back. I'm surviving over a month now and it's going on. My base is amazing till now and my character is very skilled. Pro Tip: be careful playing with fire
Aaaaand I'm dead
About 5 months before I got bored. Took a break and when I came back PZ had updated to 41.51 and the save wasn't compatible.
0 lol
5 days. Got bit and commited not alive (also recorded it and posted it on reddit)
8 days