What's a good home base setup above ground where you don't get harrassed by zombies over night?

[ThePHiLsTeR [¬º-°]¬]

I've always made a base deep underground, but I'm tired of living like a mole.

[RavenD]

I usually find a motel with 2 stories, there i knock out both set of stairs and create a single path in. there i put down a hatch to block half of it. at worst i have to deal with a few. but it will give you lots of room to put everything and even a garden ontop.

[Trooper Bri]

If I'm just playing traditional 60 minute survival in lazy mode, I'll usually find a small, stone based POI like one of the diners, ladder up to the roof, and build some kind of enclosure for storage. Doesn't have to be fancy. I'll also knock down anything in the POI below zombies can climb onto. If they want to smack on the walls at night if I'm up there crafting instead of mining, have at it. Easy to fix.

Or I'll build what I call a skinny tower. It's just a 7x7 tower. 4 vertical supports with 5 block spacing between them. Very efficient, and Structural Integrity friendly.
1'st floor is 6 blocks off the ground with bars for floors so I can use it to deal with uninvited guests below. It's easy to add spikes below, and even turrets to deal with them later.
2'nd floor above that is where early storage and crafting happens. 3'rd floor is for expanded storage, and more crafting.
All floors above that are for an eternal water source (goodbye in A21 apparently) and crops that have 10 plots each with a center lighting source. Each floor gets its own crop. I think my tallest one was 10 floors.

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

Originally posted by ThePHiLsTeR ¬º-°¬:

I've always made a base deep underground, but I'm tired of living like a mole.

One go-to easy-to-build base setup that has been always quite successful is the stilt base.

Build several 3/4 blocks high columns and build your base over them. Put a long ramp on one side and an emergency exit on the other side, and you're done.

[DrLamp]

I don't like stilt base designs anymore because of structural engineer zombies. Don't like living underground because of miner zombies.

I'll usually live flat on the ground and once I get a some cement mixers I'll build 2-3 forges that do nothing but make concrete and build a base sitting atop a solid concrete block 12x12 3 high. That way if a horde washes through there's no real worry, there's just too many blocks holding it up for it to reasonably collapse any time soon.

Lots of stone and time needed for all that concrete but really its not that bad. Your looking at 432 concrete blocks and then just plopping regular old wood walls on top, cobblestone of you feel you really need. Altogether that 8640 concrete mix. Sure takes a little while, but with 4 cement mixers, no real trouble. Should be good to go by day 14. During the 3rd week just build/reinforce your horde base with all the resources you can now pump out with that infrastructure.

Later on if you REALLY feel you need to you can bite the bullet, so to speak, grab your auger and a bunch of gas and carefully tear out all those concrete blocks (very time consuming) and rebuild them again but this time upgrading them all the way to steel. Zero worries from that point on. Man that would be alot of steel bars though and I personally doubt I'd have the patience to do it.

[BluePhoenix]

Stilts or double block floor... doesn't really matter when you get to the point of having turrets every few blocks on all walls lol. My most used location is on a hill opposite trader in west green forest biome, feels pretty central between the large city in snow and large city in wasteland (I usually loot there early for the higher loot bonuses vs green forest when not questing)

[onanonehand8]

Think creatively, there are materials that can make your base impervious. It ain't pretty, but It works.

[Macdallan]

I usually pick a solid building (stone or concrete, not wood) that's a decent size, ideally one with a fence all the way around it, and at least one large space inside that can be easily blocked off. If you can't find that a building like that then one with a partial fence works if that's all you can find. If you can't find something with a partial fence then pick the strongest building you can find that's big enough to have some interior walls and doors, or enough space you can build what you need but still wall off some areas to create more structural integrity, and more walls to slow down any zombies that get through the outer walls.

The fence and concrete or stone blocks should significantly slow down any day to day zombies. To make it safer, and so I don't have to run outside to kill everything that finds my base, I like to use a lot of wooden (and metal if I have enough iron) spikes around the fence, and around the base of the building. If I have enough materials I end up with several rows of spikes around the building. I'll always put at least one row both inside and outside of the fence, and at least one row around the outside of the building. As I have the resources I build up the amount of spikes. This won't work forever but it keeps your base safe for quite a while. Eventually you'll need some turrets or other defenses.

How well does this work? I started a new game on standard difficulty settings recently and I am on day 29. I've had zero issues so far.

I managed to find a decent house in the first few hours and it's got a strong fence (stone on the bottom row with some iron grates above that in most places) around the entire house. The downside is the fence is only 2 spaces tall so the zombies can climb over it in some places but it slows them down. The fence was broken in several spots but I've blocked all but one of the breaks with stone blocks. The spikes on both sides of the fence usually take care of any zombies that try to climb the fence but I do have to fix the spikes or replace them occasionally. That's also why I tend to make multiple rows of spikes. They might get through one set of spikes, but they don't usually get through more than that.

It's been quite effective so far. The only time a zombie got inside my base (because I haven't got it secured anywhere near as well as I could) was on a blood moon night and it followed me in through the entrance I usually use. The main entrance I use to get into the house (and it's actually the only one that's easy to use) is not a door, it's just an open window. That's how well the spike walls work, I don't have to completely block off the house. I have a reinforced door leading to the area in the house that I use as a base and I have an emergency exit that leads through the 2nd floor of the house to a spot where I can escape the building if things go sideways.

[Carinth]

I make a home base and a horde night base. The main base is larger housing all my main items, tables, ect.
The smaller base just has ammo, food and meds with building supplies to repair it and no other items. It's 2 blocks deep surrounded by a 2 block thick wall 3 blocks high with a closed in 4th level of bars, open in the top so you can stand on top.
It has solar and battery power with smg turrets and traps with mines around it.
It is 10 by 10 blocks wide with the main house building that contains the ammo/meds/food in the lower area.
Because it's solar and battery powered, it can be left as an afk base when not in use, just refill the ammo in the turrets from time to time and by placing a land claim block in it, there aren't many roamers that bother it.

[Sprocket66]

I like the Joe Brothers construction sites for elevated bases. Once you clear them they are pretty easy to maintain. I build out the top floor or two for crafting, can keep workstations blazing 24/7 without alerting the neighbors.

The newer one is my current crafting base and horde base. The lower walls are already concrete (upgrade some pillars to steel as needed) so it's easy to build a corridor style horde base on the 2nd floor. Just knock out some stairs and you're good to go. I set up a motion sensor and loud speaker to let me know if anyone comes to visit while I'm upstairs crafting.

It's been working well in the wasteland on one notch down from insane (64 zombie count) with the constant random horde x16 mod running. Very active base, no boring nights in the wasteland, if you get lonely just go downstairs to the corridor and fire a few shots to call in a block party.

[Dr.Corpse]

unless you plan on running 5 forges nonstop at night time both the miner zombies and stiltbreaker engineer zombies are highly overhyped. having a two-or three-floor wooden hut with expanded third floor on 1x1 stilts works just fine. if you make a fence farther out from concrete to deny the zombies entry its even better.

me and my wife have this setup and since we usually hunker down for the night either to go mine or jsut doing menial stuff such as organizing it works fine 6 nights out of the 7, and then we have massive bunkered-up POI for the day 7.

even nighttime hordes at non-bloodmoon nights are much less worrisome than they used to be unless you work your ass off to atract them.

[Crashtian]

Originally posted by Dr.Corpse:

unless you plan on running 5 forges nonstop at night time both the miner zombies and stiltbreaker engineer zombies are highly overhyped. having a two-or three-floor wooden hut with expanded third floor on 1x1 stilts works just fine. if you make a fence farther out from concrete to deny the zombies entry its even better.

me and my wife have this setup and since we usually hunker down for the night either to go mine or jsut doing menial stuff such as organizing it works fine 6 nights out of the 7, and then we have massive bunkered-up POI for the day 7.

even nighttime hordes at non-bloodmoon nights are much less worrisome than they used to be unless you work your ass off to atract them.

Basically this. If you are not running late game horde nights in your main base a stilt base works perfectly fine. Make your stilts 2x2 and set them a few extra tiles into the ground. Ideally past the soil and onto the stone level.

Set up spike traps to deal with screamers or random horde spawns. Have over hangs you can shoot down from.

If you want to run horde nights in a stilt base, you can do that as well, but you need to give the zeds a 2 tile wide path to funnel up and use 6-8 foundational stilts instead of 4. with proper trap set up and player defense they will -never- break it out from under you in a single horde night.

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

Originally posted by Crashtian:

Originally posted by Dr.Corpse:

unless you plan on running 5 forges nonstop at night time both the miner zombies and stiltbreaker engineer zombies are highly overhyped. having a two-or three-floor wooden hut with expanded third floor on 1x1 stilts works just fine. if you make a fence farther out from concrete to deny the zombies entry its even better.

me and my wife have this setup and since we usually hunker down for the night either to go mine or jsut doing menial stuff such as organizing it works fine 6 nights out of the 7, and then we have massive bunkered-up POI for the day 7.

even nighttime hordes at non-bloodmoon nights are much less worrisome than they used to be unless you work your ass off to atract them.

Basically this. If you are not running late game horde nights in your main base a stilt base works perfectly fine. Make your stilts 2x2 and set them a few extra tiles into the ground. Ideally past the soil and onto the stone level.

Set up spike traps to deal with screamers or random horde spawns. Have over hangs you can shoot down from.

If you want to run horde nights in a stilt base, you can do that as well, but you need to give the zeds a 2 tile wide path to funnel up and use 6-8 foundational stilts instead of 4. with proper trap set up and player defense they will -never- break it out from under you in a single horde night.

This is an old BM stilt base that I used to build and can be ready by day 7... it's not great, but it works at least for the first three blood moons:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2677667164
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2677667437
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2677667742
As you can see. there's an outer wall protecting the stilts plus I put bars on the floor to shoot any zombie that tries to attack the pillars.

[jamesglen7]

I've developed the Working Stiff store closest to trader Jen and its size is overwhelming. It takes a lot of time for repairs after a Blood Moon Convention. I've got steel blocks placed underground as they keep trying to dig under. With six generators powering electric fences and blade traps, Blood Moon is always tense even with my trusty drone and Area 51 security.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2843914584

[tritscwa]

I usually build a base just outside the city by the trader and hardly see any zombies at night. You get the occasional passer by, but its so darn rare I hardly notice. My bases are usually elevated a floor, not that this seems to matter for zombie attraction, more for the horde nights to funnel them up in a controlled manner.