Building a safe house
- "Proper Planning And Preparations Prevents Poor Performance!" -- Carpentry Guide
Safe house barricades can delay zombies breaking in by in-game hours, and buy a player time to evacuate or defend against the intruders. This guide will help you create a tough base that a medium horde won't break through.
The first five considerations for building a base are important. The other three are optional:
- Zombie population
- Water availability
- Location
- Two or more stories
- Close to trees?
- Gas availability
- Items availability
- Is the building big? - Because it takes more labor to defend The Grand Ohio Mall, than the much smaller Rosewood Fire Department.
- Barricade materials
There are three barricades materials: planks, metal sheets and metal bars. All have different statistics, for instance, planks are easiest to find but the weakest of them all, metal sheets/bars are stronger and harder to find. Bars allow the player to see through the window or door while having the same health as a metal sheet.
Barricades prevent entry or exit, and this applies to the player as well as zombies. The player cannot enter or exit through a barricaded door or window. It is therefore important to consider carefully what part of the structure will be used as an entrance before placing barricades. On buildings with second story windows, sheet ropes provide a useful entrance that can't be used by zombies. This allows all of the first floor doors and windows to be fully secured.
In an emergency, a player can put up furniture to work as a temporary barricade. Remember that whatever the player puts up against a door, the player can not open the door until the barricade is removed. In addition, materials to barricade are normally heavy.
- Barricading windows
Windows are extremely fragile and create noise when they shatter. A plank added in front of a window will buy some time before it shatters into a million pieces. You may also want to consider barricading extra doors so that you only have just two points of entry, such as a main door and a backup door. Take a look at the Barricading and Carpentry section to see how you can improve your safehouse to make it the ultimate anti-zombie fortress you can have.
- Visibility
A door or window barricaded with up to two planks can be viewed through (as long as it is not covered by a curtain). This provides some measure of protection while allowing awareness of surroundings.
Doors or windows barricaded with three to four planks, or metal sheets, cannot be seen through.
A barricade made of metal bars can be seen through while providing the same level of protection as a metal sheet.
- Building wooden barricades
If you have found a hammer and some nails, barricade all your windows with as many planks as possible. You can create planks by dismantling interior doors and furniture or chopping down trees with an axe. You will also need a saw to create planks from logs. You can also find planks and nails out in the world, such as the garage of houses. A great way to think about where you can find these items would be to consider where these items in the real world would be (a player wouldn't find a plank of wood in a bedroom dresser!). When building barricades, be careful, and be sure to clear the area of nearby zombies before attempting any kind of construction. Not only are you defenseless when building, you will make a moderate amount of noise, which may result in zombies showing up.
- Creating a sheet rope to climb down a building
Consider installing sheet ropes on all of the upstairs windows. In an undead siege, you may end up being trapped in your house's second floor with your first floor swarming with zombies, who are trying to go up to your second floor. You can climb up and down a sheet rope, making it a good alternative exit/entrance that zombies cannot use. However, in most cases this will not be important.
- Destroying stairs with a sledgehammer to stop zombies.
If you're lucky enough to find a sledgehammer, you can use it to destroy the staircase to the second story of a safehouse, rendering it unreachable to zombies. Just be sure to have a sheet rope installed on the north, east or south side window. Make sure to NEVER destroy the stairs unless sheet rope installed on the higher levels.
- Building walls - optional
Walls are very good, they provide safe places to farm, fish, work on cars, collect water, etc. But they can be quite costly, just one wall costs 3 planks and 5 nails. But they can have extreme benefits to those who can afford them.
Walls can give the player more room to store loot and provide more safety overall. The issue is a larger base makes it, so less space is defended. Zombies can more easily breach the defense.
If there is a massive horde coming. As a last resort, throw a pipe bomb or a Molotov cocktail. Explosives and fire CAN Clear out a massive horde, but the base might be burnt down, and it could give the player burns or kill the player. If a player does catch fire, the best thing to do is run for a bit.