Ive tried a few games and cannot make it more than 10 minutes if that into a game before i've got a swarm following me. am i just supposed to tank through the swarms (5+) zombies or am i doing something wrong. I've found sneaking to be almost useless since every zombie immitiatly sees me even if their not looking at me somehow while sneaking

Play tutorial.
Play sandbox, initial infection template to get used to the game.
Play custom sandbox or whichever challenge you want after you are used to the game.
Embrace death.
Git gud.

Project Zomboid is a bit of a tricky game to get into early on, and newer Players will certainly struggle due to the unexplained mechanics and strange design choices of the game. I'd recommend looking up some Youtube videos to give you advice on where to start...

But other then that, a key thing to remember is, don't get discouraged. Project Zomboid has a rough start, but the more you play, the better you'll get. There's a lot to uncover and learn, and you're going to die a lot to get to that point (Trust me, everyone does).

My biggest piece of advice to a new player is: If you see a gun... take it, but DON'T use it. Guns in Project Zomboid are a beginners trap; useful in the hands of a skilled player, but will get you killed if you use them recklessly. Before firing any firearm, make sure you have a vehicle and an escape route planned: As if you fire; every Zombie in the vicinity will converge on your location.

Play your first 50h in sandbox with half of the normal population just to learn to fight and learn basic mechanics which you cannot learn from the tutorial.
Tips)
1-Get a pan as a first weapon, it hits hard enough. No knifes of stuff like that, blunt and long distance until you can get your hands on an axe (best weapon in the game) or a crowbar (high damage, best durability)
2-Try NOT to fight more than 1 zombie at the time. But if you can’t help it, aim with right click and walk backwards making the Zs form a “conga line” let them get in the way of your swings, let them come to you and you’ll be safe. (Btw make sure to check your back safely from time to time) As soon as two start going at the same speed move a little and make them form the line again. (Your walking speed is faster than their default speed) The line method will help you manage hordes, but start small. Practice, understand the rhythm of the fight, learn to manage the zs at your convenience.
3-Know when to get the hell out. Fighting, running, pushing, jumping fences will make you tired. Each level of tiredness will make your melee hits less and less effective. If you’re too tired to fight they could grab you and it’s game over. If you get overwhelmed, walk (don’t run) to the trees, lose them.
Another way of losing them is walking behind a house, crouching (C) so they will register that as your last location, and get out of there fast.
Btw if you run in the forest you could trip, you can get scratched or even worse, get lacerations! Be careful, don’t run in the woods.
4-You don’t need to sprint, like, ever. So don’t do it. Save energy for the important stuff, fighting.
5-You won’t get peace and quiet in the city. Find a base far from the center, something you can defend and won’t get a constant flow of zs coming your way. Zs spawn more in the city by default, so getting away from it will make it easier. You need to come to the city for resources, but you need a safe place to retrieve to when you’re tired, hungry or hurt (or all of them).
6-Curtains are your friends✨ If you don’t have materials to barricade your base yet, the best you can do is place (and close) curtains on every window of your first floor (on the second floor you don’t need them). This way the zs won’t see you/won’t come to you.
If you haven’t collected enough sheets to cover up your windows, you can always simply turn off the lights of the first floor. Although not as safe as covered windows, at least you won’t be as visible. So try to stay in the second floor at night if you’re going for the second option, though.
7-Stick to melee. Guns make a lot of noise, thus attracting lots of zs. Avoid that until you’re at least 100h in and ready to fight hordes.
8-For the first few days (bout a week) you still have electricity and water. While you’re going about your day, prepare for the shutdown. You’ll need a rain collector to collect rain water, you need 4 trash bags, some planks and carpentry levels for it (you’ll level up carpentry by barricading your base and disassembling wooden objects in it). And for the energy you’ll need to find a generator. You can find generators in garages and in warehouses. To use it you need a magazine, “how to use generators” and read it. And finally some gas that you can get with a gas can from cars or from the gas station.
-Don’t place generators indoors, the fumes will kill you. -The generator makes noise and it will attract zs. -You can turn it on and off as needed.
9-If you find a car in good condition and you can’t find the key, try using the little 🔎 menu on your left, enable foraging mode and check around the car. You may find the key!
-I know it’s tempting, but try to not hit zs with your car, you’ll wreck it and it won’t work.
10- The helicopter is coming!!
It’ll come around day 7. If you start making it that far, maybe watch a video on how to survive it. And if you really get to survive enough to worry about the heli, congratulations! :D

The best advice I can think of to newbies is to learn how to fight zombies in Melee so thats what I'll focus on. The rest you can figure out later when you can actually stay alive.

Go into settings, turn on the option to highlight zombies when theyre close enough to Melee.

Since you're new, I wouldn't even bother with looting right now. Get used to combat first and prepare to die until you figure it out.

Focus more on melee combat than ranged, guns are powerful but very risky. Dont bother with guns unless if u have lots of ammo and a vehicle. Guns are like ringing a dinner bell.

Your spacebar is essentially this game's "block/defense" option in combat. If you miss a melee, press spacebar to shove an enemy away from hitting you.

Try to group zombies into a line to they conga line towards you.

Shove, melee, back away. If you can do this reliably to a group of 3 zombies without getting hit, you can theoretically handle any sized horde with the above strategy.

Melee them as they get close enough while backing away from them. Hit them at the bare minimum of your range so theyre the farthest away from you while still being able to attack them, space management is key.

Always be sneaking around everywhere.

Fences are your friends, hop over a short fence to get zombies to trip over them trying to get you. This gives you an easy follow-up attack to whack them on the ground. This is also how you can survive against runner zombies.

Zombies are stupid, if you make them follow you but break line of sight, they'll keep heading to the location they last heard/saw you at.

SOUND is a good way to manipulate hordes. Letting an ambulance, fire truck or police car siren blare is a good way to lure zombies away or to a location.

The most likely places to get bitten are your hands and neck, (from shoving and zombie sneak attacks) so protect those areas the best you can. The legs and feet are the least attack places to be attacked, some players even choose to not wear pants to keep cool! But crawling zombies attack those areas specifically so watch out.

My advice is to learn how to lose the zombies, it's pretty simple if we're dealing with a somewhat large but still manageable group of zombies. The key is to lose line of sight, lead the zombies to a place where you can "dump" them. For example, lead a group of zombies to follow you, find a house, run to the corner of the house and then escape from there. If done correctly, zombies will hang around the corner they last see you.

Bro, I'm new too. We can learn together

Originally posted by Unspoiled Apple:

Ive tried a few games and cannot make it more than 10 minutes if that into a game before i've got a swarm following me. am i just supposed to tank through the swarms (5+) zombies or am i doing something wrong. I've found sneaking to be almost useless since every zombie immitiatly sees me even if their not looking at me somehow while sneaking

I'd recommend Retanaru on yt and learn about zombie line of sight breaking. He does really good videos testing stuff with the game mechanics.