One of the many skill available to the player in Project Zomboid is the skill Nimble. Nimble is one of the movement skills of the player. This skill will govern how fast the player can move when they are in the combat stance. This is the move your are in when aiming the weapon.
This guide will show you the best ways to level the nimble skill and show you why it can be useful to train this skill up. It will also include some information about speed gain and show you when is a good time to give up training this skill. If you’re looking for sneak mode, check out this guide.
How to Level Up Nimble in Project Zomboid
The only way that the player can currently gain any experience in the Nimble skill is by moving around in combat stance. Therefore, the only way that you can actually level up nimble is by moving around while in the combat stance mode. To train the skill hold down either the Left CTRL key or the right-mouse button. You will notice your character crouch down slightly as if they were about to attack.
Through my own testing of the skill experience it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not your character is close to zombies. It seems that you will gain the same amount of level no matter what. With that being said, the only way you can level nimble is by moving in combat mode. But luckily for us, you can grind this semi-passively.
The Best Way to Grind Out Nimble Experience
A tactic shared by reddit user u/Lumarin on this post explains that they simply run a macro on the game to make the character walk against the wall. OG Skyrim players will probably find some familiar ground here from leveling sneak. Essentially, just go into a safe house, hold down the CTRL and a movement key and let your character move against a wall for eternity. It is also within your best interest to pick the right traits and occupations going into the game.
The Best Traits and Build for Nimble
There are a few traits that will help take your nimble skill to the next level. In the reddit post, it is explained that by getting to a level 4 Nimble (with 0 fitness), you will become faster than all of the walking zombies when in combat mode. That means you’ll never have to worry about them catching up to you. You could also have the default level of 5 Fitness and a level 3 Nimble to get the same effect. This is because Fitness also raises your overall movement speed.
That being said, there is an optimal build for Nimble. As it is one of the slowest and most painful skills to grind out, you may want to just start with a good nimble stat. As you can see in the image above, the three traits and occupations you want to take if you want to start with Level 3 nimble (and a +125% learning boost) are:
- Burglar (Occupation)
- Gymnast (Trait)
- Fast Learner (Trait)
Both Burglar and Gymnast will raise your nimble from the get-go. This also means that nimble with get a boost to learning experience. The Fast Learner trait will simply make all skills easier to level up. You should probably just get it anyway.
What is the Nimble Skill Actually Good For?
You might be wondering what the actual point of leveling up your nimble skill is. Well you’ve probably noticed by now that your character can out-walk all zombies at normal speed. This means you never really have to run anywhere in the game (Running gets you killed). You can see on the Project Zomboid wiki how each level in Nimble affects your character’s movement speed.
Your character will walk naturally pretty slow when they are in combat mode through, however. This means that zombies WILL be able to catch up to the player while they are trying to fight them off. The speed of your character while you are in the combat stance mode is governed by their Nimble skill level. By raising nimble it will make your character move around a lot faster.
There are also rumors that having a higher nimble skill will make it harder for zombies to pull you down to the ground when attacking. I have tested and tested but haven’t found any evidence that this is the case. If you’ve noticed this or have seen any proof please feel free to leave a comment below but I tested it for a while with different characters and didn’t actually notice any difference with nimble in regards to pull-down.