Project Zomboid is a fun indie game that has the player fighting to survive the zombie apocalypse. Surviving requires you to constantly worry about things like hunger, thirst, disease, shelter, and having enough weapons and ammo on hand to handle the zombies at your door. Ultimately though you are merely delaying the inevitable as the game continues until you fall to the zombies.
It’s a tough game at times and the inevitability of death has inspired players to create mods to use cheats to either extend their lifespan, give their character’s a better start, or simply to mow through zombies without worrying about death knocking on their door. Here are some of the better cheats that can make the game a little easier, a little longer, or just simply to remove any and all risk of dying.
Updated on August 31, 2021 by Ben Baker: Originally this article mentioned that cheats were only possible through mods. Over time it’s become possible to accomplish these cheats through the debug menu in the game. This has opened the door to take advantage of the game’s mechanics to work in your favor as you play. This list has now been updated to include a brief guide on how to activate the debug menu through steam. It also covers some of the more interesting cheats that are now possible using the debug menu. The game is still hard and death is inevitable short of using God Mode, but with these Project Zomboid cheats it becomes a lot easier.
How To Cheat In Project Zomboid
The first thing you need to do is enable the Debug menu. To do this you need the following:
- Right-click the game from Steam’s Library.
- Select Properties and from there go to General.
- Type -debug into the text box under Launch Options.
Now when you enter the game you can click on a button that looks like an insect on the left side of the screen. From here choose the cheats you want to implement.
15 Backup Save File
Typically when a player dies in the game, their character becomes a zombie and they are respawned as a new character in the map. Some people, however, have grown so attached to their characters that the idea of losing them to the zombie virus is too much to bear.
To avoid this dilemma, you will need to create backups of your save files and store them outside of the game’s files. Then when you die or are at risk of losing your character, simply replace the current save file with the old one you stashed away and you will have only lost a little bit of progress. It’s basically a manual checkpoint system in a game not designed to have checkpoints or do-overs.
14 Learn All Recipes
There are a number of recipes to encounter and unlock in the game. Many require being found in the game world and others are unlocked by choosing the right occupation. This can cause a few recipes to be locked away in some playthroughs.
To save yourself time and headaches you can use the Learn All Recipes cheat in the debug menu. This will give your character knowledge of every recipe in the game allowing you to craft anything. You’ll still need the resources of course, but this is a huge help.
13 Set Your Skill Level
There are a number of skills that can help keep a character alive in a typical playthrough. Normally these skills are assigned by the Occupation and are grown over time as the character levels up.
With the set skill level cheat you can decide how high each skill can be. This is a great way to gain a high level of useful skills like Sprinting, Blunt, or reloading to make the early game easier. It can also let you dedicate time to skills that aren’t involved in combat.
12 Freeze Time
There are a lot of harrowing moments that occur in this game and it's easy to get overwhelmed when swarmed by zombies. The freeze time cheat allows you to pause the events of the game. This is great to take a beat and get your bearings.
It also allows you to prevent the day and night cycle from turning. Night can get pretty scary in this game so being able to put off the nighttime indefinitely is invaluable for survival.
11 Spawn Items
Items are typically gathered by finding them in the world. Some of the more rare items can take quite a while to track down and obtain. There are also times when a healing item or more ammo would be nice to have at a moment’s notice.
The spawn item cheat allows you to force an item into existence wherever you want it. This can be used to obtain strong weapons early, resources for cooking, or an essentially healing item. Being able to supply up before facing a horde is a handy cheat to have.
10 Toggle Wounds
Over the course of play, the character is going to take a variety of wounds in combat. These can range from minor scrapes to debilitating injuries that hinders movement speed. Managing these wounds can mean life or death and be very tedious at times.
The toggle wounds cheat allows you to dictate the health of your character. You can stop bleeds, heal limbs, and unravel severe injuries. You could also cause said injuries if the game is feeling to easy, but odds are the healing factor is going to be more useful as a cheat.
9 God Mode
This is perhaps the most common cheat utilized by players in practically every game. God mode prevents the player from receiving any damage and will make them immortal. From a gameplay standpoint, it removes any and all risk which makes a survival game, which requires risk to be entertaining, kind of pointless.
Some people, however, enjoy the freedom God Mode provides and honestly, the ability to wade into a horde of zombies without being scathed can be a really epic feeling. It tends to lose its charm after the thousandth zombie kill and players will find themselves toggling this off or abandoning the game altogether if they abuse this cheat too much.
8 Infinite Carrying Weight
As a survival game, you are tasked with amassing resources necessary for survival. You’ll need things like food, water, ammo, weapons, gear, and raw materials to build structures. Unfortunately, everything in this game has a weight and your character can only carry so much at any given time, forcing players to prioritize what they pick up and potentially leaving something valuable behind.
Having a mod that gives your character an infinite carrying capacity or even removing the weight requirements of the items negates this issue. Your character will go from deliberating over which shotgun to put in their pack to carrying hundreds into battle. It doesn’t break the game too much and eliminates the tedium of making multiple trips to the same spot over and over again to get everything.
7 Fly Mode
Perhaps the next most common cheat after God Mode, Fly Mode gives players the ability to explore the game world from high in the sky. It’s a great cheat for being able to explore different parts of the game without running into any obstacles and can even give access to areas the developers never intended for players to reach.
It is a little overpowered in Project Zomboid, as zombies are incapable of flying and as a result, you’ll never die so long as you stay in the air. But eventually, you will be required to land and gather resources needed to survive which can expose you to risk. It’s a great cheat for those who’ve played through the game a few times and merely wish to explore the world at their leisure.
6 Teleport
This is an interesting cheat in that it gives the game a new mechanic that requires additional strategy to fully exploit. Basically, this cheat allows players to mark specific areas of the game for them to be able to teleport to later, players can mark their base and teleport there in an instant enabling them to avoid death when surrounded by a horde. It can also be used to teleport to important areas that might have lots of supplies that can’t be gathered in one trip.
It’s still a cheat in that it allows you to bypass many of the dangers present when walking back and forth between two points. But given that it requires you to find and mark the area first makes it a more tolerable cheat for some players.
5 Refill Ammo
With the high number of respawning zombies in this game, having enough ammo to keep the undead masses at bay is frequently a problem and often the main cause of death for players. The refill ammo cheat or infinite ammo cheat gives players access to unlimited ammo that they can spray into the rotted faces of their enemies without worrying about running out.
Like others on this list, it’s one of the more acceptable zomboid cheats in that it doesn’t remove the player’s risk of dying to thirst, hunger, and other factors so there’s still always a threat. Honestly, if enough zombies are on the screen infinite ammo will merely delay your death, but it can be a fun cheat to let you exact revenge on the zombies that have been killing your characters over and over again.
4 Delete Mode
This is an incredibly handy cheat, especially for those who enjoy building in this game. This cheat allows a player to delete objects in the game that might be blocking their path to certain areas or simply give them a redo on item placement. Nothing is more frustrating than taking the time to accumulate the resources needed to build a structure only to accidentally put it in the wrong place and this cheat removes that issue.
Other versions of this cheat will also allow players to delete parts of the environment, allowing the player to replace say a section of fence or tree to open up new pathways that might be more convenient. It’s a fun cheat for reshaping your world and removing the headaches that come with building.
3 Creative Mode
Speaking of cheats handy for building, the permanent creative mode will allow players to build things in the game at zero cost and instantaneously. Players in survival can quickly throw up a stronghold to keep their player alive without having to spend countless hours gathering the necessary supplies first.
This is a great cheat for those wanting to get creative or for those who want an easier start in the game by having a premade base. It’s also great when players are ready to rage quit after miscalculating the resource requirements for a structure and find themselves one item short.
2 Barricade Mode
A key element of survival in Project Zomboid is ensuring there are as many layers of protection possible between you and the zombies’ teeth. Barricading objects in your base is key to keeping the hordes at bay and can extend a player’s life span in the game.
This Project Zomboid cheat allows a player to instantly barricade objects to a desired level at no cost. It’s useful when you find your base’s defense unprepared for an attack or if you simply want a safe place to hang your head while you are figuring out the game. Industrious players can combine this cheat with other build friendly cheats to build a practically indestructible fortress.
1 No Delay Between Shots
This is another really fun cheat for players who’re becoming exhausted with the grind and frequent death and just want to unleash some violence upon the undead hordes. No delay between shots means that shotguns will now fire like machine guns.
Combine this Project Zomboid cheat with something like infinite ammo and you can endlessly fire blasts into the rotting undead for massive carnage. It’s great for mowing down hordes if you find yourself dealing with too many to handle or simply to have fun, but keep this cheat on too long and you’ll find yourself unable to go back to the standard weapon fire rate which will seem incredibly sluggish by comparison.