The Mental Toll: Panic & Stress
Panic and Stress are core survival mechanics in Project Zomboid. High panic reduces player combat effectiveness (accuracy and damage), while chronic stress leads to unhappiness and depression. You can fine-tune these rates in your sandbox settings to create a “Hardened Survivors” or “Terrified Rookies” experience.
| Reading Time | Difficulty | Last Updated |
|---|---|---|
| 5 minutes | Intermediate | January 2026 |
Configuration Variables
These settings are found in your{ServerName}_SandboxVars.lua file.
1. Combat Panic
PanicIncreaseValue: Determines how much a player’s heart rate spikes when spotting a zombie.PanicDecayRate: Dictates how quickly a survivor “calms down” after leaving a horde’s vicinity.- Optimization: For more experienced/veteran survivor servers, increase this decay rate.
2. General Mental Health
UnhappinessIncrease: The speed at which players develop depression.BoredomDecrease: How effective activities like reading or exercising are at removing the “Bored” moodle.
The Smoker Trait
Stress is most commonly caused by the “Smoker” trait if a player hasn’t consumed a cigarette recently. Since there is no global server variable to disable smoker-specific stress, we recommend providing Cigarettes and a Lighter in your server’s “Starter Kit” to prevent initial player frustration.Support Channels
If you need assistance or have any questions, please contact our support team:- Live Chat: Available on our website
- Website Ticket: Submit a Ticket
- Discord: Join our Community
- Email: [email protected]
Last Updated: January 2026 | Project Zomboid: Mental health settings set.