Which skill to level first, and what each level really gives

Open the skills list Every level of all 6 skills, with the rank the game names it, what it costs to leave, and the game's own wording for what it grants.

A skill is a ladder of 5 or 6 ranks, and the game decides two things about it: what one rank costs in experience, and what reaching it changes. The first is in the tables and is easy to compare once you put the six side by side, which the game never does. The second is where this page has to be careful, because a level’s advertised effect and its exported effect are not always the same thing.

The game’s own proficiency screen tracks 12 named abilities across the six skills. Every figure on this page comes from one of those or from the experience tables behind them. Where a level’s text promises something none of them carries, this page says so instead of repeating the promise.

What earns a skill experience

The proficiency panel prints a line per skill saying what pays into it. All 6 of them end with the book, and all 6 start with the action you repeat. Only 4 of those repeated actions carry a figure in any exported table.

Scavenging is the shortest ladder in the game, by a distance you can count in trips. Every location the game exports pays the same 50 for coming back from it, so the whole ladder is 98 of them and no trip is worth more than another for this purpose. Defense is the other flat one at 25 a kill, which puts its 7,550 at 302 zombies across the whole run.

The two food skills pay by what you make. A crop pays 30 to 450 experience a harvest and a recipe pays 25 to 175 a dish, so the same ladder is 143 to 2,134 harvests or 329 to 2,302 dishes depending on what you grow and cook. That spread is larger than the gap between two skills, which is why “level Farming” is not a plan and “plant the crop that pays” is.

Trapping and Crafting are the exception. Their panel lines name an action the same way the others do, "remove prey from traps" and "craft at workbench", and no exported table puts a number on either. The price of those two ladders is known and the pace of them is not, so nothing on this page says how long they take. Where to set every trap and what to craft stop at the same line.

What each ladder costs

Farming costs 13.1 times what Scavenging does, and it climbs one more rank on the way because it starts at 0 rather than 1. Two skills out of six account for 69% of all the experience in the game. The other four are cheap enough to finish while you are still working on those two.

The cheap opening that is not a cheap skill

Sorting the same six by what the first level costs reverses most of the table.

Farming and Cooking start at 100 and 150 experience, the two cheapest openings of the six, and then run to ladders costing hundreds of times that. They are also the only two that start at level 0 rather than 1, and that first step is the research: until it is done neither skill counts a point. Do it early and let the ladders run. The trap is reading the speed of that first level as the speed of the skill.

What a level actually changes

The proficiency screen tracks 12 abilities. 10 of them are a figure on the skill level itself. The other 2 are not on the level at all, and a page answering for either has to go to the table that does carry them.

Read the ladders against that list and the picture is uneven. Below, every level of all six skills with the abilities whose figure moves there, written the way the game writes them.

8 of the 32 rows move no tracked figure, and all 5 of the Defense levels are among them. The other 3 sit at the bottom of Farming and Cooking, below the point where either skill counts anything, so there is nothing there to move yet.

Defense is five levels of unlocks

Not one Defense level moves an ability the proficiency screen tracks. What the ladder does instead is hand over Workbench recipes, and those are carried: each recipe names the Defense level that unlocks it.

Two things in that table are worth stopping on.

Level 1 names two things it lets you craft and neither recipe carries the condition. The Sandbag and Spike Barrier recipes have no unlock source in the data at all: they sit on the Workbench from the start at the Crafting level they ask for. Whatever the level text means, nothing exported holds those two behind it.

The top level is not the only route to the barriers it unlocks. All 2 of the packages Defense 5 gates on the Workbench, Titanium Door Package Titanium Door Package Furniture Packages 3000 g 2×2 cells Keeps indefinitely and Bulletproof Window Package Bulletproof Window Package Furniture Packages 1500 g 2×2 cells Keeps indefinitely , also carry the furniture catalogue as a source, at $80 and $40, and nothing in the data puts a Defense level on that second route. Doors and windows has what the barriers themselves are worth. The point here is that the ladder buys a recipe, and a recipe is not always the only copy of the thing.

Every Defense level also carries one figure the proficiency screen gives no name to, rising from 0.05 at level 1 to 0.3 at level 5. Since nothing names it and no rule reads it, this page does not say what it does.

Where the level text runs ahead of the data

Four more places where a level’s text and the data do not line up. One of them is expensive.

Cooking 4 and 5 unlock recipes that no recipe asks for. The recipes carry the Cooking level each one needs, and that level tops out at 3: 112 at level 1, 207 at level 2, 176 at level 3. Above 3 there are none, out of all 496 of them. So climbing from level 3 to the top of Cooking costs 52,200 experience, and what it moves is the quality floor, from 40 to 70. The recipes list filters by the level a recipe wants if you want to check.

Scavenging raises the Exposure ceiling at 3 of its 5 levels, not all of them. Levels 1, 3 and 5 take it to 100, then 250, then 500. The 2 levels in between move the exploration stamina figure instead, and their own text talks about carrying capacity and clearing obstacles, which no exported field carries at any level. What level 5 does carry beyond the ceiling is the deep search on the Abandoned School and the Abandoned Hospital, which the data names. Exposure and how long you can stay has the moves each ceiling buys at every site.

Trapping’s Rare Prey Weighting is a number with nowhere to go. Levels 2 and 4 raise it, and every animal carries a rarity band, but nothing says which band counts as rare or how the weighting enters the draw. Where to set every trap prices the rest of the ladder and leaves this out of every figure on it for the same reason.

Crafting’s stamina cut has nothing exported to apply to. The ladder takes the stamina a craft costs down by 30% at the top, and no Workbench recipe carries a stamina cost, so the share is real and the saving cannot be worked out. The other half of that ladder, the perfect crafting chance, is carried properly: it adds to each recipe’s own rate, and what to craft uses it.

Farming changes the risk the pot is fighting

Every crop carries the same chance of pests, weeds and drought. The planter takes a share off it, and so does Farming. The two work on the same roll, and only the skill’s own level text tells you the second one exists.

At level 5 the skill removes 40% of that chance on its own, before any pot is involved. The two stack against the same roll, so a cheap pot at high Farming and an expensive pot at low Farming are closer than the shop price suggests. Which planter to buy prices the pots against it.

The cost is the catch: reaching level 5 takes 64,020 experience, more than finishing Scavenging, Defense, Crafting and Trapping together.

The same levels also raise the perfect planting chance, to 40% at the top. Every crop carries its own perfect rate of 20% and a perfect harvest is worth exactly 1 extra unit on all 34 crops. What no exported rule says is how the skill’s share and the crop’s rate combine, so this page gives you both figures and not a total.

The books that sell you proficiency

The shop sells 6 books, one per skill, each $500 for +200 proficiency and 1 hour of reading time you do not get back.

Only 2 of the 6 buy a level. Farming and Cooking are the skills that start at 0, and their first step costs less than the book grants. Every other skill starts at 1 and its next level costs more than 200, so the book is partial progress toward a level you would reach by playing.

Against the ladders above, 200 is a rounding error: it is 0.3% of the way to the top of Farming. Buy one to skip the research on a food skill you are not going to practise. Do not buy one expecting it to move a skill you already use.

What to do

1. Research Farming and Cooking on the first day you can. Neither counts a point of experience until you do, and they are the two dearest ladders in the game.
2. Put your first deliberate effort into Scavenging. It is 3% of the experience in the game and 98 returns from trips you were making anyway.
3. Take Defense only as far as the barrier you intend to fit. Every one of its levels is a list of Workbench recipes, so the level you want is the one that names the thing you want to build.
4. Treat Trapping and Crafting as running costs rather than goals. Their levels arrive from work you were doing, and nothing exported says how fast.
5. Weigh the 64,020 experience that level 5 of Farming costs against a better pot before chasing it for the crop risk alone.
6. Stop Cooking at level 3 unless failed dishes are the problem. Above it the recipes stop arriving and only the quality floor moves, for 52,200 experience.

Quick reference

• Cheapest ladder: Scavenging, 4,900 experience, or 98 returns at 50 each.
• Dearest ladder: Farming, 64,020, or 13.1 times the cheapest.
• All six together: 177,090 experience, of which 69% is Farming and Cooking.
• Cheapest opening: Farming at 100, which is also the dearest skill to finish.
• Needs research first: Farming and Cooking.
• Carried between runs: 0. Every ladder restarts.
• Books: 6 at $500 and 1 hour each for +200, and only 2 of them buy a level.
• Levels that move no tracked figure: 8 of 32. All 5 of Defense, plus 3 at the bottom of Farming and Cooking.
• Multiple dishes at once arrives at Cooking 3.
• Compare every level side by side in the skills list.