Stealth Weight and Noise

Stealth, Weight, and Noise

Your load changes your movement speed and stealth. The lower-right HUD shows your load, tier, quiet/exposed state, and nearby infected suspicion.

Carry less

Weight includes your inventory, armor, offhand gear, and an equipped Traveler's Backpack, including its storage, tools, upgrades, and fluid tanks. Hover the weight indicator beside the recipe book to see the server's current values.

Tier	Default weight	Speed penalty	Quiet movement
Light	16 or less	none	Yes
Burdened	over 16–25	10%	No
Heavy	over 25–40	20%	No
Overloaded	over 40	35%	No

Stay quiet

You are quiet only when:

1. you are crouching;
2. your load is Light; and
3. you have not recently fired, attacked, or broken a durable block.

Quiet infected do not automatically target you. If one sees you, suspicion builds; it rises faster at close range and drops when you break line of sight. EXPOSED means the quiet conditions are not met. Brutes notice quiet survivors faster.

Horde-spawned infected already know their assigned target, so stealth does not hide you from them.

Noise

Action	Investigation radius
Suppressed firearm shot	12 blocks
Unsuppressed firearm shot	96 blocks
Melee attack	16 blocks
Breaking a durable block	20 blocks

Suppression reduces the radius but does not make a gun silent. Breaking durable blocks can attract infected just like combat.

Weather cover

Rain reduces infected suspicion and noise investigation. Thunderstorms reduce them further. Contaminated rain and storms still damage you when precipitation reaches you.

Next: check the weather and horde forecast.