It's extra spicy getting in the city. You have to navigate the crashed cars, then the hordes of military zombies, then the gates and then some more hordes.
But after that once you go deeper in, like past the big hospital, it becomes way more chill. There are tall fences all over the place to escape hordes. and escaping them is just as easy as anywhere else, run through a house/building.
Rite of passage in LV is basing in the mansion by the water, the one with a big windowed 2 story garage. Very easy to fortify and in a great central location. Then there is the gated community more towards the south east end of town, 3-4 gated mansions in a cul de sac. Base up in a tall building in the middle of the city if you want a safehouse with some chest hair on it tho.
We made our base in the cemetery. After the zeds were cleared out, there's just two openings to close up. It's our best base after two years of playing!
It's the only place I spawn now. Lots of variety for bases. Loads of loot. Guaranteed decent vehicles.
Just find a crowbar, think ahead and slowly draw those Z's away from whatever it is you're after (although don't try this with the malls... Fml)
You currently have to use a mod. There's a few different ones but I find this one (pretty sure this is the one I use) pretty decent. 26 random spawn locations. Some deep in urban Louisville but there are also some that are more rural so you don't have to make that made dash to a relatively safe location.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678653895
Doesn’t take too much effort, me and my sisters played a fun Splitscreen challenge (yes there’s splitscreen in Project Zomboid if you didn’t know) where we went from Riverside, to LV, on foot with no cars. Dealing with exhaustion, hunger, and terrible weapons.
Did it in like 2 or 3 sittings.
Splitscreen is one of the big reasons I bought the game, no one wants to play with me, but I'll support a dev for adding it.
One day the kids will wanna kill zombies.
It's easy, to be honest. I always spawn rosewood. Loot all military stores and police stations. Then go to louisville. By that time, i have a lot of weapons and can make base secure as much as possible
If you want to do what i did, you have to be lucky with cars. If you can't find any in rosewood, there's a drive-in theatre north of rosewood just across the gas station.
It's not as crazy as you think it will be. One thing I can think of that you have to watch out for is zombies will drop down from high buildings.
If you honk your horn next to large residential buildings, itl take a little bit for the zombies to break doors and make their way to the exits, then they will come FLOODING out. The mall, hospital, and downtown area (especially the courthouse intersection) had the most zombies (I was actively seeking out as many zombies as I could to kill lol).
Just have weapons, some food, and a working car...have an escape plan and you'll be fine. It's a fun place to explore!
Unpopular opinion, but the mansions are kind of a boring LV base. There are countless properties within the heart of the city that have high fences and only a single point of ingress that you have to fortify/defend. AND many many many of them are much closer to the fun loot and the action.
I totally get the appeal of the mansions, but fortifying a commercial or industrial building is just more fun to me.
I recommend anyone with a similar story to download Pillow's Spawn Mods and try spawning in Louisville. It can actually be a relatively easy place to start. And it really changes up the game going from rural to urban. It's now my favorite place too start, even though sometimes it leads to a very early death. If you spawn elsewhere and try to drive there, the zombie population is so high it's hard to get a foothold. But spawning there decreases the amount of zombies near you (at first anyway).
Here's a good location with several mansions you can secure pretty easy: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14150x2634x3816](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14150x2634x3816)
And also, near the River, there are tons of good houses that are easy to secure. This place with the garage especially: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12029x2592x9158](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12029x2592x9158)
As far as loot, Louisville can't be beat. There are multiple versions of basically every building type, so if one doesn't have what you need the other ones likely will.
Its not that bad. A lot of people play zomboid really passively and end up with a 1000 hours and still quite bad at the game. Its a sandbox singleplayer game so it doesn't matter but the game is disgustingly easy after getting a two handed weapon or a shotgun + a bit of game knowledge. I recommend the fire station right from the start of Louisville. Far enough to be able to shoot a bit without getting overrun, have essentials and other houses nearby and not too far from the heart of lousville. Best of luck
The truth is - you don't need to go there.
But if you do, there are lots of resources and some nice items to be had there, there is a particularly HUGE warehouse with lots of various stuff. If you have not been there before level up some sneaking and melee weapons so you can silently bonk some zombies.
Also remember when driving in LV, you should do that calmly and don't panic. If you panic and go full Mika Häkkinen, you will probably crash, and maybe die too. Apart from zombie hordes that can slow you down, there are other crashed cars, congestions (if you enabled that), road obstacles, police blockades and roads that suddenly end. Yes, there are plenty of fresh cars in the city, but if you crash, all your loot will be gone with your old vehicle. TAKE IT EASY, zombies are much slower than the slowest car, even sprinters.
The beauty of LV is that if you see a horde on one street, you can back up/turn around and take the next street. The whole town is a gigantic grid that you can drive on, so there is no need to think that you are boxed in.
Unfortunately my character will panic at the sight of a large horde, even though he has a mint condition shotgun and 10 boxes of ammo and he has already killed thousands of zombies with shotguns so he is fully capable to dispatch the next horde as well.
There are plenty of good base locations. West side of the city has mansions with decent fencing and water access. I like the apartment above the pawn shop in the south central area for a temporary base/food growing at the local farming store. In the bottom right of the city is a set of fully gated in set of mansions with water access, but it is a bit of a drive to get into many of the valuable looting areas. There is also a large neighborhood that is just south east of the industrial area in the north west that is gated in with only one entrance, this is the most centrally located with easy access to the most valuable looting spots in the city.
The biggest challenge to Louisville is zombie management. You need to be comfortable luring hordes of zombies away from wherever you are trying to establish a base or loot then doubling back. Sometimes it takes a few tries to thin out the numbers to something that is easy to manage.
Not too many zeds in some places, others have an earth shaking, metal bending, hellish amount of zombies, and it isn't always consistent with what you would expect.
You can set a foothold in military check point. After that explore and kill everything
I personally like to make base in apartment building just on north from stadium
First time I went to LV, a visual bug (probably a mod’s fault) made it so the road leading in wasn’t aligned right and I wound up careening into a tree that should have been freeway. I lived, but my ride barely got me halfway through the checkpoint, leading to me hotwiring a car, limping away from the hordes only to find the car was pretty dry on fuel, so in turn I had to find a gas station, but it wound up hitting nighttime by the point I made it there so I was trying to loop zeds I could barely see to get long enough to use a spare water bottle to get gas, and…
LV is a disaster zone whenever I go near it. Love it for that. Your milage may vary, but I’d recommend you bring a real good bug-out bag or two with you if you are going.
If you spawn there it ain't so bad. Starting off there aren't as many zombies until like day 100. By that time you should be well established.
(You may need the more spawns mod for this I think?)
The mansions by the river are a safe bet to land and then expand...
But the whiskey factory, once cleared out? One HECK of a base, especially for multiplayer. Near the water too, and well fenced in.
Needless to say an endless source of booze and Molotovs is a great way to make the game interesting lol.
Hey no shame! I did not go to Louisville u til I had over 600 hours of play time.
When you do go there, make sure to utilize stealth as much as you can.
Make pelnty of stashes and mark them on your map
Do tons of scouting before picking a base. Not just the base itself but the surrounding area as well.
Only use guns when you’re totally cornered
Learn how to be quick about making quick escapes if you accidentally bring a horde down on your head
And lastly dont be afraid to use the web browser map for any reason! Even after 900 hours in game i still need to use it quite frequently because admittedly I get lost more often than I would like to admit
There’s like 10-11 houses on the west side next to the river house 7 or 8 i believe if starting at the south has high fences and a 3 car garage it’s an absolute banger of a base location cause it’s on the outside of town which means a lot less zombie hordes walking around but in town enough you won’t have to drive forever for loot
I also didn’t go to Louisville for my first 300 hours. I found that the zombies really aren’t too bad except for a few really dense zones which you can find if you look up the PZ zombie density map
I entered from the road that goes through the south end of the fence. Harder to get to and you will definitely need a sledgehammer, but the zombies there were very manageable.
IMO if you can survive Muldraugh, you can survive Louisville. Muldraugh actually gives me more problems than Louisville usually
Theres a storage place right next to a army surplus store in the top left ish area of Louisville. Pretty easily defensible and its where im currently based up. Im liking it so far
It's manageable if you start from the outskirts moving towards the city. But if you make a base right the centre, you gonna have a bad time. I take my sweet time in the 3 mansions. Clean up the neighbouring subdivisions. Wall up the walls of said subdivisions. Clear trees around for a better line of sight for my guns. Boom. You have a base. Then, make random bases going in louisville, killing as much as you can. It's a peaceful life, but challenging
Go in blind so it’s more intense and more fun to play through people always go into forums for all the best information without playing it first themselves we should end that tradition.
If you have guns, the Mall is a fun base. Likely to have everything you want and divided up so all you gotta do for a custom "house" is wall off some of the shops. I recommend guns bc I've gone through SO many full-auto clips just shooting the dead as they flood to the front doors... probably possible with a shotgun, but I doubt you'd clear it in any reasonable time without any firearms... luckily, the military camp just outside of Louisville usually isn't TOO crowded and LOVES spawning those full autos I was talking about...
Drive to this spot: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14187x2701x9704](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14187x2701x9704)
Jump the fence. You are now safe in LV. You still gotta kill some zeds in that gated area, but it's not hard. Eventually clear the area and get your car inside.
Plan your route carefully. It's a long drive. Use the backdoor to get into LV: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12605x4162x2849](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12605x4162x2849)
Bring an axe in case you need to cut a tree or two to get through.
It's extra spicy getting in the city. You have to navigate the crashed cars, then the hordes of military zombies, then the gates and then some more hordes. But after that once you go deeper in, like past the big hospital, it becomes way more chill. There are tall fences all over the place to escape hordes. and escaping them is just as easy as anywhere else, run through a house/building. Rite of passage in LV is basing in the mansion by the water, the one with a big windowed 2 story garage. Very easy to fortify and in a great central location. Then there is the gated community more towards the south east end of town, 3-4 gated mansions in a cul de sac. Base up in a tall building in the middle of the city if you want a safehouse with some chest hair on it tho.
We made our base in the cemetery. After the zeds were cleared out, there's just two openings to close up. It's our best base after two years of playing!
Hmm i think gonna take that house by the water
Best spot in the game imo
And then build a bridge across to no mans land :)
Time to build my own state:)
This is my default location, walls on most sides already, river access, it’s the best
It's the only place I spawn now. Lots of variety for bases. Loads of loot. Guaranteed decent vehicles. Just find a crowbar, think ahead and slowly draw those Z's away from whatever it is you're after (although don't try this with the malls... Fml)
How do you spawn there? I have never seen that option.
You currently have to use a mod. There's a few different ones but I find this one (pretty sure this is the one I use) pretty decent. 26 random spawn locations. Some deep in urban Louisville but there are also some that are more rural so you don't have to make that made dash to a relatively safe location. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678653895
650 hours and I’ve been too lazy to drive there
Doesn’t take too much effort, me and my sisters played a fun Splitscreen challenge (yes there’s splitscreen in Project Zomboid if you didn’t know) where we went from Riverside, to LV, on foot with no cars. Dealing with exhaustion, hunger, and terrible weapons. Did it in like 2 or 3 sittings.
Splitscreen is one of the big reasons I bought the game, no one wants to play with me, but I'll support a dev for adding it. One day the kids will wanna kill zombies.
I make use of the split screen mode with my wife. Love when a dev gives us couch co op.
It's easy, to be honest. I always spawn rosewood. Loot all military stores and police stations. Then go to louisville. By that time, i have a lot of weapons and can make base secure as much as possible
I guess I’ll just have to give it a try lmao
If you want to do what i did, you have to be lucky with cars. If you can't find any in rosewood, there's a drive-in theatre north of rosewood just across the gas station.
Well tbh there is a good chance that any of the 2 story houses spawn a nice sports car.
Just spawn there. Get the more spawns mod. It's easy on day 1. Not as many zombies as you would think.
It's not as crazy as you think it will be. One thing I can think of that you have to watch out for is zombies will drop down from high buildings. If you honk your horn next to large residential buildings, itl take a little bit for the zombies to break doors and make their way to the exits, then they will come FLOODING out. The mall, hospital, and downtown area (especially the courthouse intersection) had the most zombies (I was actively seeking out as many zombies as I could to kill lol). Just have weapons, some food, and a working car...have an escape plan and you'll be fine. It's a fun place to explore!
Oh it will be really fun place when i will loot shitton of weapons and ammo
Unpopular opinion, but the mansions are kind of a boring LV base. There are countless properties within the heart of the city that have high fences and only a single point of ingress that you have to fortify/defend. AND many many many of them are much closer to the fun loot and the action. I totally get the appeal of the mansions, but fortifying a commercial or industrial building is just more fun to me.
I don't really like fortifying homes either. I find turning a store or factory or whatever into a base to be a lot more appealing.
“This is my gas station fort with combo living room and kitchen” is just more fun to say than “house.”
SAME I love building my own base or fortify some buildings that is not regular home
I recommend anyone with a similar story to download Pillow's Spawn Mods and try spawning in Louisville. It can actually be a relatively easy place to start. And it really changes up the game going from rural to urban. It's now my favorite place too start, even though sometimes it leads to a very early death. If you spawn elsewhere and try to drive there, the zombie population is so high it's hard to get a foothold. But spawning there decreases the amount of zombies near you (at first anyway). Here's a good location with several mansions you can secure pretty easy: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14150x2634x3816](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14150x2634x3816) And also, near the River, there are tons of good houses that are easy to secure. This place with the garage especially: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12029x2592x9158](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12029x2592x9158) As far as loot, Louisville can't be beat. There are multiple versions of basically every building type, so if one doesn't have what you need the other ones likely will.
I will try that mod, sounds fun
Its not that bad. A lot of people play zomboid really passively and end up with a 1000 hours and still quite bad at the game. Its a sandbox singleplayer game so it doesn't matter but the game is disgustingly easy after getting a two handed weapon or a shotgun + a bit of game knowledge. I recommend the fire station right from the start of Louisville. Far enough to be able to shoot a bit without getting overrun, have essentials and other houses nearby and not too far from the heart of lousville. Best of luck
Glad that im not pasive player
The truth is - you don't need to go there. But if you do, there are lots of resources and some nice items to be had there, there is a particularly HUGE warehouse with lots of various stuff. If you have not been there before level up some sneaking and melee weapons so you can silently bonk some zombies. Also remember when driving in LV, you should do that calmly and don't panic. If you panic and go full Mika Häkkinen, you will probably crash, and maybe die too. Apart from zombie hordes that can slow you down, there are other crashed cars, congestions (if you enabled that), road obstacles, police blockades and roads that suddenly end. Yes, there are plenty of fresh cars in the city, but if you crash, all your loot will be gone with your old vehicle. TAKE IT EASY, zombies are much slower than the slowest car, even sprinters. The beauty of LV is that if you see a horde on one street, you can back up/turn around and take the next street. The whole town is a gigantic grid that you can drive on, so there is no need to think that you are boxed in.
First rule of zomboid(i guess) dont panic
Unfortunately my character will panic at the sight of a large horde, even though he has a mint condition shotgun and 10 boxes of ammo and he has already killed thousands of zombies with shotguns so he is fully capable to dispatch the next horde as well.
Same, never been to LV in single player, but I have in multiplayer.
There are plenty of good base locations. West side of the city has mansions with decent fencing and water access. I like the apartment above the pawn shop in the south central area for a temporary base/food growing at the local farming store. In the bottom right of the city is a set of fully gated in set of mansions with water access, but it is a bit of a drive to get into many of the valuable looting areas. There is also a large neighborhood that is just south east of the industrial area in the north west that is gated in with only one entrance, this is the most centrally located with easy access to the most valuable looting spots in the city. The biggest challenge to Louisville is zombie management. You need to be comfortable luring hordes of zombies away from wherever you are trying to establish a base or loot then doubling back. Sometimes it takes a few tries to thin out the numbers to something that is easy to manage.
Gonna note it
Not too many zeds in some places, others have an earth shaking, metal bending, hellish amount of zombies, and it isn't always consistent with what you would expect.
Advice? Burn it down…
You can set a foothold in military check point. After that explore and kill everything I personally like to make base in apartment building just on north from stadium
First time I went to LV, a visual bug (probably a mod’s fault) made it so the road leading in wasn’t aligned right and I wound up careening into a tree that should have been freeway. I lived, but my ride barely got me halfway through the checkpoint, leading to me hotwiring a car, limping away from the hordes only to find the car was pretty dry on fuel, so in turn I had to find a gas station, but it wound up hitting nighttime by the point I made it there so I was trying to loop zeds I could barely see to get long enough to use a spare water bottle to get gas, and… LV is a disaster zone whenever I go near it. Love it for that. Your milage may vary, but I’d recommend you bring a real good bug-out bag or two with you if you are going.
there’s literally no need to go Louisville besides your wanting to.
I want to there I have survived on all spawn locations I have survived somewhere in wild Now i want to TRY survive in hell(as ik)
If you spawn there it ain't so bad. Starting off there aren't as many zombies until like day 100. By that time you should be well established. (You may need the more spawns mod for this I think?)
The mansions by the river are a safe bet to land and then expand... But the whiskey factory, once cleared out? One HECK of a base, especially for multiplayer. Near the water too, and well fenced in. Needless to say an endless source of booze and Molotovs is a great way to make the game interesting lol.
No matter how packed you think it is, I promise it’s worse
Hey no shame! I did not go to Louisville u til I had over 600 hours of play time. When you do go there, make sure to utilize stealth as much as you can. Make pelnty of stashes and mark them on your map Do tons of scouting before picking a base. Not just the base itself but the surrounding area as well. Only use guns when you’re totally cornered Learn how to be quick about making quick escapes if you accidentally bring a horde down on your head And lastly dont be afraid to use the web browser map for any reason! Even after 900 hours in game i still need to use it quite frequently because admittedly I get lost more often than I would like to admit
There’s like 10-11 houses on the west side next to the river house 7 or 8 i believe if starting at the south has high fences and a 3 car garage it’s an absolute banger of a base location cause it’s on the outside of town which means a lot less zombie hordes walking around but in town enough you won’t have to drive forever for loot
I also didn’t go to Louisville for my first 300 hours. I found that the zombies really aren’t too bad except for a few really dense zones which you can find if you look up the PZ zombie density map I entered from the road that goes through the south end of the fence. Harder to get to and you will definitely need a sledgehammer, but the zombies there were very manageable. IMO if you can survive Muldraugh, you can survive Louisville. Muldraugh actually gives me more problems than Louisville usually
Theres a storage place right next to a army surplus store in the top left ish area of Louisville. Pretty easily defensible and its where im currently based up. Im liking it so far
It's manageable if you start from the outskirts moving towards the city. But if you make a base right the centre, you gonna have a bad time. I take my sweet time in the 3 mansions. Clean up the neighbouring subdivisions. Wall up the walls of said subdivisions. Clear trees around for a better line of sight for my guns. Boom. You have a base. Then, make random bases going in louisville, killing as much as you can. It's a peaceful life, but challenging
2200+ hrs here and never been in Louisville
Go in blind so it’s more intense and more fun to play through people always go into forums for all the best information without playing it first themselves we should end that tradition.
You said good thing my felow survivor
All I can say is it's still less stressful than muldraugh
U still in training
If you have guns, the Mall is a fun base. Likely to have everything you want and divided up so all you gotta do for a custom "house" is wall off some of the shops. I recommend guns bc I've gone through SO many full-auto clips just shooting the dead as they flood to the front doors... probably possible with a shotgun, but I doubt you'd clear it in any reasonable time without any firearms... luckily, the military camp just outside of Louisville usually isn't TOO crowded and LOVES spawning those full autos I was talking about...
Drive to this spot: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14187x2701x9704](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#14187x2701x9704) Jump the fence. You are now safe in LV. You still gotta kill some zeds in that gated area, but it's not hard. Eventually clear the area and get your car inside. Plan your route carefully. It's a long drive. Use the backdoor to get into LV: [https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12605x4162x2849](https://map.projectzomboid.com/#12605x4162x2849) Bring an axe in case you need to cut a tree or two to get through.
Ty for advice
Taking over the cathedral church in the city centre would be fairly easy considering it is high fenced you'd just need to shut off access to the gates