Project Zomboid Moodles Explained: All 24 (Plus 5 That Don't Work)

 

    Project Zomboid tracks your survivor's condition through moodles — the small icons stacked in the top-right corner of the screen. The wiki defines a moodle plainly: "A moodle is an indicator of the current emotional and physical state of the player, similar to status effects in role-playing games." Hover your cursor over any moodle and the game tells you exactly what it means; this guide walks through what the wiki says each one actually does, which ones can hurt or kill you, and which ones are sitting in the game's code doing nothing at all. One caveat straight from the source itself: the page notes it "was last updated for an older version of the current build (42.13.2)," while "the current stable version is 42.20.4, so information on this page may be inaccurate" — treat anything not repeated below as unverified against the newest build.

 

The 24 moodles Project Zomboid tracks

 

    Counting straight down the wiki's own list — Hungry, Thirsty, Panic, Bored, Stressed, Unhappy, Drunk, Heavy load, Endurance, Tired, Hyperthermia, Hypothermia, Windchill, Wet, Injured, Pain, Bleeding, Restricted movement, Has a cold, Sick, Noxious smell, Discomfort, Dead, and Zombie — gives 24 active moodles. Grouped by what they warn about: 2 cover basic needs (Hungry, Thirsty), 5 cover mental/social state (Panic, Bored, Stressed, Unhappy, Drunk), 3 cover physical exertion (Heavy load, Endurance, Tired), 4 cover temperature and moisture (Hyperthermia, Hypothermia, Windchill, Wet), 8 cover injury and illness (Injured, Pain, Bleeding, Restricted movement, Has a cold, Sick, Noxious smell, Discomfort), and 2 mark an end state (Dead, Zombie). That's 2+5+3+4+8+2 = 24, matching the wiki's count exactly.

 

    A few worth quoting directly: Hungry "represents the character's hunger state... Being fed boosts healing rate whereas being hungry reduces carry capacity, healing hate and body heat generation." Thirsty causes "weakness, reduced carrying capacity, slightly increased heat generation, and eventual death" if ignored, and per the wiki "the water itself must be boiled, lest sickness can occur." Drunk brings "progressive levels of inebriation [that] cause drowsiness and delayed vehicle controls, as well as penalties to Search Mode."

 

 

Which moodles can actually hurt or kill you

 

    Most moodles are just inconvenient, but the wiki calls out a handful with real health consequences. Heavy load — from carrying too much — "eventually damages the character for up to 25% of their health" once overencumbrance gets bad enough. Noxious smell has two triggers, and the toxic-fumes variant, caused when "a generator is running indoors," "damages the player up to 5% of health." Hypothermia "sharply reduces movement and attack speeds, and may eventually bring the character to the brink of death." Sick is worse than either: the wiki states flatly that "in an unmodified or uncustomized game, zombie infection is always fatal" — the only fully undocumented piece is exactly how much time a fresh infection takes to become fatal, which the source doesn't state, so treat any specific hour count as undocumented. Restricted movement has an exact, quotable threshold: "If the character is barefoot and has less than 5 in physical fitness, the restricted movement moodle will appear; otherwise, if the character has more than 5 in physical fitness, the moodle will not appear."

 

 

5 moodles that exist in the code but don't work

 

    The wiki separately lists a "Removed, future, or unobtainable moodles" section with exactly 5 entries: Angry, Hungover, Fear, Morale, and Sanity. Angry "is disabled due to there being no NPCs in the current game build, although it is expected to return when they're reintroduced" — it can still be triggered through debug mode, but "even so, anger has absolutely zero effect on character actions or abilities." Hungover "is currently not possible to obtain" at all. Fear, Morale, and Sanity are all described the same way: each "has yet to be implemented, but the value can be seen in debug mode," and for all three, "changing the value has no effects currently." The wiki adds one extra detail for Sanity specifically — "some game files with the sanity sound files can still be found, indicating sanity was supposed to be added at one point" — but gives no date or build target for any of the three, so when (or whether) they ship is undocumented.

 

 

Bandage a Bleeding moodle immediately — the wiki lists applying bandages as the fix, and it's the only one given. Drink only clean, boiled water; the wiki warns unboiled sources can cause sickness. Watch your Heavy load moodle on loot runs — it's one of the few that can cost you up to 25% of your health. Go barefoot only if your physical fitness is above 5, or Restricted movement kicks in per the wiki's own threshold.

 

Running your own Project Zomboid server

 

    Moodles behave the same whether you're playing solo or on a dedicated multiplayer server, but a server is where the survival pressure they represent — hunger, cold, infection risk — actually turns into shared, persistent stakes with friends. Get your own Project Zomboid server running in minutes and split the panic instead of facing it alone. Free with code WELCOME.

 

Conclusion

 

    Project Zomboid's moodle system is bigger than it looks at a glance: 24 active moodles covering needs, mental state, exertion, temperature, and injury, plus 5 more — Angry, Hungover, Fear, Morale, Sanity — that exist in the game's files but do nothing yet. The two that matter most for staying alive are the ones the wiki is most explicit about: Heavy load's 25% health cost and zombie infection's stated 100% fatality rate. Everything else on this list is manageable with food, water, shelter, and bandages — read the icon, read what it's telling you, and react before it stacks.