Dealing with corpses in Project Zomboid

Rotting bodies make your character ill. This is separate from the Knox infection: standing near enough corpses raises the same Sick meter that food poisoning uses, shown as the Queasy, Nauseous, Sick and Fever moodles. Only the Fever stage costs health, and it keeps climbing while you stay near the pile. Buzzing flies are the usual warning.

Sources disagree on the indoor rule. Older player reports say you only get sick when both you and the bodies are indoors, while the guide above says outdoor piles affect you when you are outside too. To switch the mechanic off, set Decaying Corpse Health Impact to None in the sandbox settings.

The cure is distance. The meter only drains when no corpses are feeding it, so walk away and wait. Masks help while you work: a gas mask or respirator with a charged filter blocks the effect fully, an improvised gas mask blocks about 85%, and a bandana, dust mask or surgical mask about 25% (one source). Filters lose charge while they protect you. Antibiotics do nothing for it; see first aid.

Build 41 turned a corpse into a heavy inventory item you could carry or put in a trunk. Build 42 replaced that with a grapple: right-click the body, choose Grab Corpse, and your character drags it across the ground. Players report that dragging is much slower than walking overloaded and drains endurance quickly, so plan short hauls.

• Tapping the run key drops the body at once (one source).
• Bodies can be pushed out through windows and over fences.
• Early Build 42 players could not load corpses into car trunks or truck beds. We could not confirm that this has changed, so do not plan around a hearse.

Opinion Do not move bodies if you can avoid it. Fight where you want the pile to end up: lead zombies to a kill spot outside the fence, well away from where you sleep, and deal with them there. See combat and stealth for pulling small groups.

Burning details. One guide says the Burn Corpse option needs a single container holding more than 0.5 L of petrol, even though each burn only uses 0.1 L (one source). Bodies on a burning square are gone after about 10 seconds (one source). Because one burn clears a whole square, stacking bodies on one tile saves fuel. Burn on road or concrete, where the fire is too weak to spread, and never indoors. Rain stops fire reaching new squares but does not put out squares already alight. Keep an extinguisher, a bag of sand or dirt, or at least 1 L of water to hand. More on the fire page.

Composters. We found no source saying human or zombie corpses can go in a composter in Build 42. One wiki states plainly that corpses are not compost.

If you do nothing, the game cleans up for you.

Dead survivors and players stay where they fell unless the server option above is on, which matters if you want to recover your own kit after a death. Admins can find these options through the server hosting guide.

Every dead zombie is a small container. Stand next to it, open your inventory and the body appears in the loot panel on the right, with Loot All at the top. Most carry only clothing and a belt, but uniforms hint at better finds: police zombies can carry pistols, farm zombies seeds. Some zombies only play dead, so clear the area first. Loot before you burn or bury, since both destroy whatever the body holds.

Do corpses attract zombies? No source we found says so, and long-time players state that they do not. The danger is the work itself: digging and fighting make noise, and fire is bright and can get out of hand.

Blood on floors and walls is cosmetic. It causes no sickness and no moodle by itself, so cleaning is for looks. The Clean Blood option only shows when you carry both a cleaning fluid and a scrubbing tool.

• Fluid: Bleach or Cleaning Liquid. A full bleach bottle gives about 4 cleans and Cleaning Liquid about 2 (one source).
• Tool: Mop, Broom, Bath Towel, Dish Towel, Sponge or similar. Wet towels and broken mops do not count.
• Action: Stand beside the stained tile, right-click it and pick Clean Blood. One clean clears blood and grime on that square.

Bloody clothes are a separate job: wash them at a water source, with soap to speed it up. See clothing. Setting Blood Level to None in sandbox stops the spray in the first place.

Opinion This order keeps the time you spend next to bodies short.

1. Check the building is clear, then put on the best mask you own.
2. Loot every body. Take what you want and leave the rest on it.
3. Clear the inside first. Push bodies out of the nearest window or door so the building count drops under six.
4. Gather the outdoor bodies onto a few tiles of road or bare concrete, several squares from walls, fences and crops.
5. Burn each stack with petrol and a lighter, standing back with water or a dirt bag ready. No petrol: dig graves, five bodies each.
6. If Queasy appears, stop and walk away until it clears, then carry on.
7. Mop the floors and walls last, then wash your clothes.

With only a few bodies outside, waiting for the removal timer is fine. Next: base building.