Do Shelters/Houses just decay after time? I went home, and it was gone?

[VincentVolaju]

So Ive put a good 15-16 hours into a server the last day or 2, had a shelter stocked with guns, ammo, gun powder, food all kinds of resources. I go out and meet a friend and help him build his house. Then I go back to mine about 4-5 hours later, and the house is gone, but the furnance, boxes and stuff is still there.

Do things just randomly decay? Is there a point in trying to progress at all in the game, or spend time making / saving anything, if its just going to dissapear later?

[123]

Same thing happened to me but I lost 2 entire buildings and it deleted my character. Really no point playing if they can't even save your progress...

[VG_Elder]

They may wipe the servers due to the alpha mode. If players can't save their creations that may be a sticking point for this game.

[123]

Originally posted by Original_Gamer:

They may wipe the servers due to the alpha mode. If players can't save their creations that may be a sticking point for this game.

I think it must be a bug, I lost a character and my house, with metal doors and a heap of ammo/guns/resources. Really a bummer that they can't seem to be able to save progress.

[Drink Vodka Play Dodka]

They decay.

[Kottos]

Someone probably destroyed your shelter to take your loot. Wooden doors and shelters can be destroyed by melee hits (door about 160 hits, shelter about 100 hits). Metal doors, wood walls, wood doorways can only be destroyed by explosives. Wood pillars, foundations and ceiling are not destroyable. Don't use a metal door on a shelter they will just hit the shelter

That aside there is decay starting from the highest floor but shelters dissapear in about 15 hours, wood structures take about 3 days and you can reset the decay timer by opening any door within the structure.

I usually start farming in a shelter, get all the required materials there and try to build a 1 by 1 house (as in foundation size) asap to prevent anyone from easily getting into my house. You will need 1 wood foundation, 4 wood pillars, 1 wood doorway, 3 wood walls, 1 wood ceiling and a metal door. To craft these you will need wood planks which cost 10 wood each. 1 by 1 should be about 38 planks = 380 wood and 200 metal fragments = about 40 metal ore, metal ore to fragments is a bit random.

As a side note wipes do happen, easiest way to tell is to check crafting, anything you researched aside from the starting recipes will have dissapeared as well as any structure on the server.

[VincentVolaju]

Originally posted by Kottos:

Someone probably destroyed your shelter to take your loot. Wooden doors and shelters can be destroyed by melee hits (door about 160 hits, shelter about 100 hits). Metal doors, wood walls, wood doorways can only be destroyed by explosives. Wood pillars, foundations and ceiling are not destroyable. Don't use a metal door on a shelter they will just hit the shelter

That aside there is decay starting from the highest floor but shelters dissapear in about 15 hours, wood structures take about 3 days and you can reset the decay timer by opening any door within the structure.

I usually start farming in a shelter, get all the required materials there and try to build a 1 by 1 house (as in foundation size) asap to prevent anyone from easily getting into my house. You will need 1 wood foundation, 4 wood pillars, 1 wood doorway, 3 wood walls, 1 wood ceiling and a metal door. To craft these you will need wood planks which cost 10 wood each. 1 by 1 should be about 38 planks = 380 wood and 200 metal fragments = about 40 metal ore, metal ore to fragments is a bit random.

As a side note wipes do happen, easiest way to tell is to check crafting, anything you researched aside from the starting recipes will have dissapeared as well as any structure on the server.

How sure are you on the decay time of shelters because Ive heard so many diff things today after asking in-game and reading forums? In game someone told me all houses decay if you dont have a fire lit inside, or a bed roll, or open your doors within 24 hours. On the forums someone said that Shelters decay 8 hours after you make them, wood houses 2 days and metal houses 4 days. However they are "supposed" to reset the timer if you open any of the doors, but that that is buggy right now and sometimes the timer doesnt reset? I also read somewhere that there is a 24 hour grace period to anything you create, even if its a shelter.

So many different things, I dont know what to believe =(. So just wondering how sure you are on the decay times and the other stuff etc.?

Also, I build a 3 story house with a friend earlier, took us a couple hours. We came back to his house only to see people walking up stairs along side his house getting in and looting it all. What is the "safest" kind of house that I can build, that will have the best chance of keeping my items safe over night when I am not online?

Thanks for the help!

[Durgrobach]

Can any devs answer this problem? I'm very interested in this as well, along with how it may change. If this mechanic is "silly" it will probably prevent me from purchasing :(

[Kottos]

I'm not sure but its pretty close to 10-15 hours. If you logout for more than 2 hours expect to not find your shelter not because of decay but people.

There's is no grace period 100% sure, I've been raided with C4 literally minutes after making a 2x2 house.

As far as I know the only way to reset the timer on decay is by opening a door attached to any part of the structure, don't know if there's a bug in the latest update but I have a house right now that's lasted a couple of days without any problem. IMO if you play every day, at least to open 1 door, you should have no problem with decay in wood or metal houses, if something does happen to your house it's most likely a raid or wipe. If you want to be completely sure though you can try repairing your house, put some wood in a hotkey and spam against the wall/doorway/ceiling/foundation/stair, if you lose wood it's been damaged. Start from the top since the decay starts there, use metal fragments to repair metal doors and you can even use it as a raiding defense if you hear C4 ticking wait for the first explosion quickly go in heal the wall and door before the second explosion, be fast or you will die from the second blast.

As for house design well it's tricky, there's no defenses yet (they plan to add turrets, trip wires and sorts) so if they want to get in they probably will. The point is to make it unattractive for the raider mostly by placing lots of doors and walls between the possible wall/door breach and your loot room. Or you can try to be deceiving and put a storage box in absolutely every room of the house so they don't know where to go. One thing you should always avoid is placing one stair that leads to multiple floors, you want to force them to go through at least 1 door to go up or down.

Common raiding techniques are:
1. Place a wood barricade close to a wall then put a large wood storage box next to it. Jump on the storage then on the barricade and you can place a c4 directly into the 2nd floor wall.
2. Place a foundation next to the house, place pillars and use stairs to go up while checking through the cracks of the walls for any loot rooms or just keep going up to the roof. C4 to go from top to bottom or C4 the wall directly if you see loot. (This is what happened to you)

Ways to prevent this well for #1 you can't do anything about it. For #2 you can place foundations with pillars in the middle (to prevent stairs) right next to your house, you have to raise the pillar as high as your house though. Even if you do this it won't stop them from getting to the roof, the raider will place 1 foundation next to the one with the middle pillar and build a stair the same way and jump from his stair to your roof, it's a 1 foundation lenght jump.
To sum up, against an experienced raider the first, second and top floor are completely raidable with minimal costs.

If you're playing alone a 3 by 3 is pretty decent something like this: http://imgur.com/JIPQDBT
X are stairs, loot room is green, red lines are doors.

Asuming the raider is coming from one of your stairs, takes at least 2 doors to get to your loot room, at least 4 to the next stair. Put walls on the remaining places never let them free roam inside your house they can scout the design or if you want to be annoying put door and storages in each 1x1, you could make it look like there's 7 possible loot rooms in each floor and maybe move the real loot room around in some floors or spread the loot. IMO you should start with the foundations and pillars in the middle outside when your house has 3 stories. Problems with this design is that it's easy to grief since the stairs are on the outside they just have to break 1 wall or door and the stair and then place a roof where your stair used to be. Plan ahead and never stop building up. It's still far from unraidable but it will be expensive.

Well this got long :P

[☿AngryHubert☿]

wow..after logging in all my stuff was deleted (was playing on a pve server (with no sleeping..)
my hardbuilded mountain home is gone, and my charakter too... thats not realy funny at all..

the days before sometimes stuff disappears with no reasen...a bench, furnace.. sometimes shelters etc. an NO, they dident blown up by other players!

thats realy much frustating

[Crix]

Too bad you can't dig underground in this game to hide stuff.

[Panda]

was any of your stuff still therE?

[Wardrop]

i have a post it was this morning.. i had a full box of stuff everything else was gone.. metal door was closed etc.. there was an update and it was gone from the eastern (large) server.

[sudo_rm]

Yea i had the same problem in the UK 1 server
I must say that till they fix this issue there is no point in playing and advancing

[ZeroKarma]

Im a bit concerned about being able to destroy everyone elses stuff. Wurm sort of kept this at bay by giving you guards in your deed that would defend. But if you go away for a few hours and come back to a wreck, whats the point in building anything too good.

[Critty]

They do not decay, people can blow open the walls with Explosive Charges, people raided you guys.