I might be missing something here.

Right now I'm a Carpenter.

For Farming I read the "Beginner Book" but when I move onto Intermediate it says too complicated. I move back to Beginner it says I already know that.

For Carpentry I read the Intermediate and Advanced but when I get to Expert it says too complicated. I go back to Advanced it says I already know this.

Do I need to practice this stuff to keep leveling up? And honestly I don't need the Farming skill but Carpentry is pretty important and being a Carpenter I thought I could, you know, get good at Carpentry. :P

Books consist of pages and reading pages increases experience gain multiplier. You level up faster when knowing stuff.

But leveling up is only done through skill execution, reading gives no experience - only multiplier.

Each book covers acceleration at certain skill level, beginner is 1-3?
If you are already level 4, beginner book is useless (you are past it) and you need to find and read intermediate book in order to get that bonus. And so on.

The books are optional, only makes progress faster.

Lin545, you da man. :D

No wonder all the FAQs tell you to take slow reader as one of your red skills.

Glad I could help you. Slow reader is okay-ish for a negative trade off.

I hope you learnt importance of Spacebar and Knives as melee attack :) I usually pick up Lucky and Outdoorsman, that allow to get higher chance for Axe in Zs inventory and prevent rain illness.

I also love these three mods:
- Hydrocraft (lots of things)
- PumpPower (can pump fuel out of gas stations with generator)
- WoodenDowels (can build with wooden dowels instead of nails at price of high carpentry and higher material cost)

but I played online without any mod just fine and survived 6 months in the woods. A saw, cooking pot, some knife type (to make fire) is everything I needed. Ofc finding axe is nice. Only problem is nails, since .. average players love to waste a crapton of nail boxes on a crapton of useless furniture. Hence my preference of mods.

Not ready for MODS yet, would like to get at least a week in the regular game.

Right now I'm using a strait up Carpenter. I double the ax for logs and melee, yeah it's bulky and slow but it saves me having to switch over when Zed surprises me in the woods when I'm cutting.

The building I'm in only has three downstairs windows and three spots upstairs I can nail a rope to, so to this point I barely even use nails. Why the hell would I want to make furniture anyway? :P

Is there a distance penalty on melee? It seems a knife would allow Zed to get a lot closer.

Understandable, I don't want to spoil your own experience. I mean, I once had time when I took a chair with me and slept right on the open road :D

Space is important to push and kick whilst having melee weapon equipped. Ctrl is important for slow backward walk, to move outside of zombie bite range. The knife weapons, when triggered right when zombie start to bend for attack is a one-hit-kill, fastest killing when 1-on-1. But distance has to be close. Look angle (facing) is very important. I imagine you may be bitten few times before you master it. Its a game-changer afterwards :)

nvm I found it

Its pretty easy, since you can run around crying and then get them lost in the woods :)
Or fire a pistol round on the other side of the town, so they all get away.
They tend to sum up in the woods until about 2nd month, but then rush into the city. Provided you know your way around with axe, they can be chopped in thousands... each with a chance for a new axe... after the small breaks for mushroom or berry soup :)