Project Zomboid is a zombie survival RPG with very deep mechanics. Along with surviving the most obvious threat of flesh eating undead you will have to navigate your character’s psyche as well as stress will impact your character’s ability to deal with their situation. One of the most common moodles that can appear in Project Zomboid is ‘Anxious’. This is the first indicator in the ‘Stress’ category.
Dealing with the anxious moodle is important to keeping your survivor ready to fight and making sure they can still do everything correctly. This guide will tell you everything about anxious and how to get rid of it.
What is Anxious and Why is My Character Worried?
As aforementioned anxious is the result of a moderate stress level on your character. Even though anxious is only the lowest level of stress in the game, it will still have a negative effect on your character. It will be best to try to deal with your character’s stress level as soon as it begins. The Anxious moodle is also the first sign that you character has been infected by a zombie virus. But don’t let that worry you too much, anxious is still very common from other reasons. Some of the reasons your character might be anxious in Project Zomboid are:
- Being around too many zombies
- Living around a lot of blood or corpses
- Having some kind of injury or pain on the body
- The first sign of a zombie infection (usually starts about a day after getting bit)
Although these aren’t the only reasons your character are getting stressed they are the most common. If you picked the Hemophobic trait when creating your character they will be upset by the sight of blood making them anxious every time they see any blood. Another symptom related to traits is a “Smoker” character not getting their fix of nicotine.
Failure to deal with your character’s stress level at the Anxious stage will cause the stress to get more severe and move them on to the next stages. The four stages of stress from least to most sever are:
- Anxious
- Agitated
- Stressed
- Nervous Wreck
Players that have a very stressed out character are going to find it harder to get their character to sleep and shoot accurately when using a gun.
How to Deal With Stress in Project Zomboid
Now that we know how our character is getting stressed out and not sleeping lets figure out how to deal with it. With most items you can hover over them to get more information on their effects. For example when you hover over the Magazine item you can see that the item gives a +15 stress reduction when read. This will help reduce your character stress level and get rid of the anxious moodle. Some of the best ways that you can get rid of anxious are:
- Reading Books and Magazines
This is one of the easiest ways as magazines are in large supply around the houses in Know County. Search bookshelves and inside book shops. - Watching TV and Listening to Radio
Pretty self-explanatory. If your character is standing around while the TV or radio is on their stress will slowly reduce. If you aren’t a fan of drawing zombies to your location keep the volume down or use headphones. - Clean Your Base
If your character is Hemophobic then they really don’t like the sight of blood. You can clean up all the blood splatter in your base by using Bleach and a Towel. Right click the blood areas to clean them up. - Smoking Cigarettes
You can smoke cigarettes to reduce your character’s stress level as well. If you have the smoker trait on your character, you actually need to smoke cigarettes from time to time in order to not get highly panicked. Characters without this trait can also benefit from smoking cigarettes.
