The Case of the Race for the sensible Base (Alpha 16)

[Sekhen]

This is an attempt to start a slightly different “OMG Best Base” thread.

 

I am looking for suggestions and screenshots for base designs. BUT, the idea is for these bases to be, what I would like to define as “Sensible”. This means a base that isn’t unreasonably resource-intensive to build and run, and serves all the usual needs. I love to see elaborate bases as much as the next guy, but many bases that are showcased, just aren’t practical, when it comes down to it. Fun? Yes. “Sensible”? No.

 

If you want to take up my little challenge, please provide suggested designs according to these guidelines (which I hope everyone will agree are “sensible”)

 

1) The base should serve 1 player

2) The base should be a design that can serve as a permanent safe home

3) The base should work well in an un-modded game, on default difficulty

4) The base can naturally include any traps you’d like. But not in pointless or excessive numbers (Yes, you can surround a base with 60 blade-traps, and 25 auto-turrets, but that’s not really “sensible”. Put traps to good use, please)

5) The base should be as self-sustaining as possible. It shouldn’t rely entirely on you personally fighting all zombies. Let’s assume you have better things to do.

6) The base should not be claustrophibically small, nor should it be unnecessarily large. Make good use of space

7) The base should be built with consideration for reducing damage. Keep repair-needs to a minimum, and make repairs easy to do

8) The base should be resource-efficient to run. Avoid huge expenditure of ammo and fuel...switch stuff off when not in use, etc

9) The base should not just deal with 7 day hordes. Lots of groups of wandering zombies come through, and if left unattended, will eventually smack holes in everything. You should be able to handle them, wothout needing to spend all your time fending them off. Again: let’s assume you have better things to do

10) The base should cover basic ammenities. Crafting, cooking, storage.

 

Bonus Objectives in the designs:

 

A) Good-looking designs never hurt

B) Room for a farm large enough to sustain the player, is a bonus

C) Good parking would be a bonus (especially kerping Alpha 17 in mind)

D) Ease of access. Deep in a hole up on a hill on a remote island is defensible, but not that practical

 

Let’s see what you can come up with!

[Blazer777]

i feel i have a base that meets all ur requirments sekhen i hope a UI mod is alright and do secondary satellite bases qualify too

[skullpoker]

Trade secrets, buddy. Sorry.

[Blazer777]

not me coz i build the one style of base that everyone hates

[RagefulShrimp]

This works for insane. Most horde nights you can pass in afk mode and return to get your loot.

1) Find at least a cobblestone building with big enough open area inside(hospital, fire station).

2) Build your crafting stations on the second floor(third floor is overkill with current zombies difficulty).

3) Fill the entrances with spikes but don't block them.

4) Make a wooden ramp frames before the spikes. Don't bother to upgrade, as zombies almost never bother destroying them.

5) Make sure you have an entrances from all 4 sides if the building is big so zombies won't start destroying walls, but will try to pass through the entrances.

6) Then kill those crawlers with a spiked club inside your building or shoot them from your second floor.

7) When you have enough resources, you can make a room on a first floor with 50 pillar walls or other small blocks so you can kill crawlers safely in melee.

 

Ways to fortify the entrances:

1) Leave default entrance, but from 1 block outside place a 2/3 row of spikes around the entrance and a 2/3 high ramp for you to jump over on both sides.

2) Make an entrance 3-4 high and fill it with the spikes. Use the second floor to navigate the building. Safest way.

3) Point 2 plus an actual door nearby. Not safe as zombies will try to destroy the door sometimes instead of going through the spikes.

 

Another place to build your base(not recommended, but somewhat working as well):

1) Find a two at least cobblestone buildings.

2) Place your crafting stations at the second floor of any of them.

3) Make your killzone between those two buildings.

4) Allow zombies to pass through your spikes as for a base above so they will die from the spike damage and won't destroy your walls.

[Whorhay]

Dig a 5x5x5 hole. Put a 3x3 square of Spikes, placed upside down, in the bottom of the hole, surround them with your building material of choice. Using cobble, or concrete, poles line the walls of the pit, placed horizontally with the space on the outside. I like to put the bottom row of poles placed in their highest position, with the other two rows at their lowest. For the top row of lining use full blocks. Then dig out some space to stand and move on each side of the pit. You can dig out extra rooms for crafting and storage.

 

Eventually I like to dig the pit all the way down to bedrock. Then I put in a series of full pillar blocks running up the center of the pit with blade traps placed on top of and hanging under each block. Support those pillars from the sides by placing places against the walls. Zombies fall in and take damage from the blades while falling. The spikes and fall damage help to break the legs of most trash zombies. Then all you have to do is deal with the tougher zombies and clean up the pile of bodies.

[Faded]

6) The base should not be claustrophibically small, nor should it be unnecessarily large. Make good use of space

 

Define "unnecessarily large".

 

My designs tend to be larger than they really need to be, but this is done as much for aesthetics as it is to reduce the need to repair.

 

I did a "warehouse" build back in Alpha 14 that was quite large (50x50x25 I believe), but I made it that big on purpose so I didn't have to bother to repair all of it all the time. The design included a lot of fortifications, and the interior space was large enough that it could easily be adapted to utilize the electrical system in A16.

 

My last most successful design was a pyramid that was 23m tall at the apex. Inside was a winding passage that afforded plenty of opportunity for defense; it was intended to be a place to draw the 7th day hordes into and dispose of them easily and efficiently. Wandering hordes ran right over the base without harming it unless you alerted them to your presence.

 

This meant the base was pretty large overall, but that was necessitated by the design; small pyramids don't have a lot of interior space unless you want to dig down.

 

I've since built both larger and smaller pyramids, but the small ones are a bit cramped, and the large ones take a really long time to build and end up impractically large even by my standards (I had to abandon a 100x100 pyramid after I started getting vertex errors)

[Greybeard_86]

1) Find a relatively large flat spot in a biome of your choice.

2) Dig a 3x3 hole 5+ blocks deep.

3) Dig another 3x3 hole 10-20 blocks away from the first, aligned with North, South, East, or West.

4) Connect the two with a tunnel.

5) Put a 3x3 of blocks in the top of each hole with a gap in the middle.

6) Put a hatch and ladder in the middle of each hole.

7) Put all your base stuff in there until such time as you have the resources to build a nice base.

 

This prairie dog style base is great when you need a safe place because you can always pop up at one hatch or the other and surprise the zombies to get rid of them.

[ColdSteelRain]

A post office works pretty well. I'm at day 78, and it's holding up fine, but I'm starting to worry about the basement. I built a simple wood and window hut in the center of the roof, but I think I'd skip that and just take over the second floor next time. I ran a ladder up the side, knocked out one of the overhang blocks and put a hatch in. The hut started small, and then I expanded to fit the workbench and chem station.

 

I fight the horde from a platform 20 - 30 blocks away (about 10 x 10 with upgraded concrete legs and a metal truss deck, with a window roof to keep the vultures out). started with barbed wire underneath, and have upgraded to 8 blade traps and electric fence under the platform and barbed wire fence and spikes around the perimeter.

 

It isn't pretty, but it is resource efficient, and I don't spend a lot of time repairing it.

[Menace312]

Something easy eh...

 

Well a good one is, to just create a layer of blocks on the ground. Flagstone if your just starting out. Make it something like 20x20 or smaller if you prefer, and place ramps all around.

 

Next make some pillars of normal blocks 4 - 5 high. Make the distance between them 8, so it will hold if a pillar is destroyed.

On the pillars you place logspikes on the bottom 2 rows all around, pointing outwards.

 

The top layer can be whatever you like... Bars or whatever. But make sure theres a hole, so you can drop molotov and pipebombs down on the zombies.

 

The zombies are dumb, so they will run under you where you now have a nice killing floor.

They won't go for the pillars much, especially since, there are logspikes on them.

[Scyris]

Get any shovel, go to desert biome (I say desert as sand is the easiest to dig thru overall), dig down 20-40 blocks, dig a small tunnel, dig out a 3 block high 5 block wide square, there's your base. Use a wooden lader, or the old ghettovator to go up, and/or have a drop down with hay at the bottom for easy access. Very little material needed, just wood, stones and grass fibers. Could make this on day 1 if you start near a desert biome. The purpose of the tunnel is when zombies look for you, you'll be too far from the bases entrance so they will be too stupid to find it and will run above where your standing, could even set some wood spikes up there later to kill any roving hordes etc.

 

Only reason I dig 20-40 blocks down is so I don't have to listen to the zombies screeching up there as it gets on my nerves. Otherwise even going down 5 blocks deep underground is more than sufficent if its on flatland. If you only go 5 blocks deep all you need really is a wooden ladder to get in/out.

 

I honestly hate building a base in 7 days to die, far too time/resource consuming and its not even needed when a hole in the ground would serve the purpose just as well, actually better if you think of it as you'll never really need to do repairs.

[Sakurambo]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1096260494

this on 120' per day

this is an old ss of an unfinished base, i didn't have nothing more recent

make a towre 8x8 o 10x10 of cobblestone, 8 or 9 blocks high, 4 ramps (at least 4 blocks large) and connect via drawbridge to the tower

i add a row of upside down scrap log spike every day or every 2 days, depends on how much time i spent mining

later, 28 day horde at least, i add 2 shotgun turret and 2 spotlight per ramp, positioned at 3 blocks height near the tower, i put them on only on horde night

random horde die on the spike or just pass trough them without touching any walls

this on nomad on lower, if you ramp up the difficulty use steel spikes and 4 turret for ramp

[sadpickle]

The most sensible base is a rooftop with the ladders knocked out because it takes zero effort and spider zombies are pretty rare / easily defeated. Now, you CAN build a base out of cobble, and get some decent levels doing it. But cobble won't hold up to a wandering horde (assuming you have the misfortune of being at home when they spawn, and for me that happens quite a bit, usually around 20:00), let alone the 7th night, and that time can be spent chopping trees and building a large amount of wood spikes for your first horde, which is more than adequate when placed liberally around a building. Even with the hordes "uncapped" by modifying the XMLs, the first horde is extremely simple to deal with via passive defense, when you are at your weakest and lacking supplies and armor to engage them personally.

 

Most materials before concrete aren't really worth the effort, not when you can get to level 40 fairly quickly by looting and mining. You can in fact totally avoid fighting for your first 40 levels with almost no detriment, though you will probably have to fight at least sometime if you want to loot houses. But, again, with quality of loot tied to scav levels and the Quality Joe perk, there's no particular reason to loot houses early unless you are in need of something specific or are hoping for an early wrench (worth rummaging through kitchens at the very least). I very rarely attempt seriously looting until I have the QJ perk.

[Tommy_Boy]

7x7. Mad dash in days 1 & 2 to nail down a nice flat spot, gather quantities of stone, with reasonably nearby clay.

 

Perimeter of the 7x7 at ground level is flagstone block with 3 high 50 pillars around the entire perimeter, capped on the 4th block with flagstone block. This establishes the fighting platform with the center of the tower being a ladder. Extend out from this 4th tier with either more 50 pillars placed horizontally 2-3 out, iron bars, whatever you have the resources to support. Extend up another level to make a 3rd floor for item storage and crafting. Once built, you can now focus on passive perimeter defense with inverted log spikes at least 2-3 rings from the initial 7x7 perimeter. An additional ring of barbed wire helps to preserve the spikes longer into horde night and tees up the bad guys for active defense. I highly recommend placing a layer of flag/cobblestone under the log spikes for durability if a few logs fail.

 

Access can be had from either an underground hatch, a bridge, a ramp, or even a drawbridge. You can expand by building 45 degree walls similar to what can be found in some YouTube videos, which funnel into blade traps mounted to the 50 pillar platform you built outside the 7x7 perimeter. The 45 degree funneling walls will help with the SI of the extended platform, too. With this core, you can tunnel like crazy, expand as you see fit, and rest easy that each expanding layer adds defensive capability but provides avenues of active engagement.

[Fyrdrinc]

Super-simple but effective for quite a while early on...

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=644920845

 

I also have a design using cobblestone that is 7x7 and stacks nicely as the center of a mine. You basically lay a pad that is 7x7 flush with the ground in a low point, with a single block missing for a hatch. Then you dig down from the hatch until you have hollowed out the underside. Add another floor every 4th block (rooms are 3 blocks tall), with walls all around on the top 2 floors and pillars on the corners and on every middle edge block for every floor below that. Down at bedrock, lay a floor and wall it on the ladder side and the opposing side. On the 5x3 opposing wall from the ladder, you can fit: 2 cook fires, 1 forge, 1 workbench, 2 food crates, 1 raw material crate, and 5 miscellaneous junk crates. Plus it is easy to add a room on either side for more storage, or as I more often do, start carving out a mine for that near-bedrock rich treasure trove.

 

Best way to do this is to find a large flat patch of clay and center on it. Digging out the surface layers of clay will give you tons of clay to combine with the excavated rocks underneath to be rolling in cobblestones.

[TotallyNotABot]

My base is never sensible because I like to actually defend it with a group of people instead of making it too overpowered.

 

It always makes for a fun horde night!

To start off you build a house/tower. 2 stories is the minimum, try to go for 3 or 4. Try to use stairs instead of ladders, so if zombies get in you can't block them off so easily.

Next you make a nice deck that surrounds you house, with a spot for a drawbridge.

Then you dig a moat. Try to not make it wider than 10 voxels on any side of your base. Fill it with spikes or other traps.

Next make some 1-2 block thick walls surrounding your base with catwalks on top. Leave enough room inside the walls for a farm. If your walls are 2 blocks thick don't upgrade past concrete. Make sure to leave room for a Garage door to enter and exit through. Bonus points if you install a few turrets above the garage door to defend from pesky lone zombies.

Next put 2 rows wood spikes (not logs) and a row of barbed wire in between the 2 rows of spikes. This sounds op, but over time you will get worn down..

 

Finally make sure that your game is on the hardest setting, 2 hour day night cycle, max zombie spawning, largest blood moon count, and make sure that nobody dies more than once. If you do, your gamestage and horde sizes will be affected. And the base might be too strong.

[Gothyc]

Super-simple but effective for quite a while early on...

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=644920845

 

I also have a design using cobblestone that is 7x7 and stacks nicely as the center of a mine. You basically lay a pad that is 7x7 flush with the ground in a low point, with a single block missing for a hatch. Then you dig down from the hatch until you have hollowed out the underside. Add another floor every 4th block (rooms are 3 blocks tall), with walls all around on the top 2 floors and pillars on the corners and on every middle edge block for every floor below that. Down at bedrock, lay a floor and wall it on the ladder side and the opposing side. On the 5x3 opposing wall from the ladder, you can fit: 2 cook fires, 1 forge, 1 workbench, 2 food crates, 1 raw material crate, and 5 miscellaneous junk crates. Plus it is easy to add a room on either side for more storage, or as I more often do, start carving out a mine for that near-bedrock rich treasure trove.

 

Best way to do this is to find a large flat patch of clay and center on it. Digging out the surface layers of clay will give you tons of clay to combine with the excavated rocks underneath to be rolling in cobblestones.

 

This is exactly what I always do - with two small exceptions:

 

* I make my floors 4 tiles high just for a spacier feeling, less materials needed to build floors, and more storage potential.

* I usually build my crafting and mushroom farm floors 2 floors down from the surface. First underground floor is the maintenance floor where all the electric wires for traps will run, and where you can repair the surface blocks from underneath. Bedrock floor I reserve for future kill room, digging out pits around my base for the Zs to fall down and herding them through bedrock corridors towards the kill room which straight below the center of my base.

 

I especially like building these bases on clay patches, just like you do. The free clay combined with all the stone and iron you get from digging further down will boost you a lot in the beginning and save a lot of time.

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Here's an easy one that's viable from day one with starting tools...

 

1. Find a flat area in a town.
   
2. Lay out a 5x5 grid of wood frames on the ground (don't upgrade them - you'll be picking them up again!)
   
3. Outside (but touching) one corner of the grid, place a group of four wood poles in a 2x2 block. Don't use the centred ones, but the normal corner ones - and rotate them so that the four poles touch each other at the centre of the 2x2 block.
   
4. Repeat at the other three corners of the grid, and then pick the wood frames back up.
   
5. At this point, you should have four stubby stilts in a square, each composed of four wood poles touching each other.
   
6. Add more poles on top of the existing ones until they are four blocks high.
   
7. Place a solid platform of upgraded wood blocks on top of the poles. The platform should therefore be 9x9 in size and 5 blocks above the ground.
   
8. Build a ramp/stair near the platform (2 blocks away) so you can jump from the ramp/stair to the platform and vice versa.

 

In my experience, the above can easily be done in a day with starting tools, and you can spend your first night on the platform.

 

Over the course of the next couple of days:

 

1. Build an identical set of poles (2x2 blocks with the poles on the inside touching each other) on top of the platform, also four blocks high.
   
2. Build a second platform on top of these, and a ladder or stair connecting the lower platform to the upper platform.
   
3. Build walls and a roof on the second platform, so you have a weatherproof room.

 

The advantage of this base is that while spending time in the room you're high enough above the ground that passing zombies won't detect you and won't try to break in to get to you, and the design of the poles holding up the base means that when a wandering horde of zombies comes past they'll walk straight under the base and out the other side without having their path blocked by it (and therefore without attacking the base in frustration).

 

This means that the base is pretty much maintenance-free, and you can spend your time doing more interesting things than constantly rebuilding and repairing zombie damage.

 

However, this base is not designed for Blood Moon nights, so you need to build a separate structure for those (I usually go for the simple platform + spikes structure).

 

If you want to, you can expand the base in a modular fashion by simply putting another 5x5 set of wood frames adjacent to the pillars of one side of the base and using them as a spacer to build two new pillars and extensions to the platforms and rooms. In my current game, I've done this three times - so I have a total of nine pillars in a grid, with the platforms and room four times the size of the basic version. That's easily big enough for the three of us that play co-op. I've also put business glass windows in the room; built an overhang on the roof to stop the rain coming in through the windows; and planted a garden on the roof. Oh - and I've replaced the ramp-and-jump to get onto the lower platform with a ramp-and-drawbridge, and built a railing around the lower platform to satisfy health and safety requirements and stop people falling off.

 

I've also, out of paranoia, gradually upgraded the entire lower story (pillars, platform, and access ramp) tp concrete - the structure is sound enough that you can remove any individual block and replace it without things falling down - although this is probably overkill since we've got to day 40 and no zombie has yet attacked or damaged the base, so the plain wood pillars and platform would probably still have been fine.

[Sekhen]

I should probably have clarified: I am not really that curious about beginner bases for the first few weeks...just hide behind some spikes and a wall when you need to, and that’ll be fine.

 

I was mostly looking for ideas for what you aim to build at, say, day 40-50...your permanent (or at least long-term) base

[Sekhen]

Something easy eh...

 

...nope, I never said that ;-) . I said “efficient”.

[Sekhen]

Define "unnecessarily large".

 

My designs tend to be larger than they really need to be, but this is done as much for aesthetics as it is to reduce the need to repair.

 

-Fair enough. “Unnecessarily large” is a bit subjective. But by-and-large, I’m sure we all agree, that as bases get larger, they become a bit less simple to defend. But on the other hand, for people who play a building/crafting game, microscopic bases are not a lot of fun either.

 

I like the idea of a pyramid. I have never tried that design, but the concept of an above-ground structure that random wandering zombies will just walk over, is pretty cool.

 

I’d love to see screenshots, and/or see how your 7-day defenses work. Do you fnnel zombies into the pyramid somehow, and bring traps to bear? Do zombies attack the slanted sides to get to you during hirde-nights?

[Sekhen]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1096260494

this on 120' per day

this is an old ss of an unfinished base, i didn't have nothing more recent

make a towre 8x8 o 10x10 of cobblestone, 8 or 9 blocks high, 4 ramps (at least 4 blocks large) and connect via drawbridge to the tower

i add a row of upside down scrap log spike every day or every 2 days, depends on how much time i spent mining

later, 28 day horde at least, i add 2 shotgun turret and 2 spotlight per ramp, positioned at 3 blocks height near the tower, i put them on only on horde night

random horde die on the spike or just pass trough them without touching any walls

this on nomad on lower, if you ramp up the difficulty use steel spikes and 4 turret for ramp

 

Thanks Sakurambo! I’ve tried out a few designs with ramps like that. They seem very defendable.

 

Questions:

 

1) In a “sea of spikes”, isn’t looting and repairs a bit tricky?

 

2) With 2 turrets per ramp, I am guessing that these provide the majority of damage to zombies during horde-nights. That gets a bit costly in ammo, doesn’t it? Or do you add some additional passive defenses?

[Ghostsniper343]

Just about any POI with a second story can be made horde proof (especially for the first 3 weeks) quite easily. My personal favorite is the one I call the "forge hut."

It has a forge on the ground level (hence the name) but more importantly a cobblestone foundation and can take a serious beating.

 

Before I start, let me just say I play on Insane difficulty, and either 32 or 64 zombies for horde night depending on which computer I use.

 

Step 1 Break both sets of stairs(duh)

 

Step 2. go to ground level and destroy everything in the middle of the room, including the bathroom walls. You dont want anything that the zombies can climb on top of.

 

Step 3 place down wood spikes on the floor inside (I think you need right around 48 spikes in total.)

 

 

Your Done! I can have this house horde prepped in less than 1 day (50 min days)

 

At this point your house is done but it is just the bare minimum. I will usually upgrade all the wood blocks once, just to level up construction tool skill, if you dont like the look of upgraded wood blocks then it isnt required.

 

I also always add 2-3 rows of log spikes around the outside of the house, the thought is that they will break their legs while attempting to break in and once they are in, they will crawl and only break a few of the interior spikes, instead of running all over the place and doing damage to alot of spikes.

 

 

With this design the zombies will not be able to break into your second floor, they will usually break a small hole in one of the sides of your house, and run around on the spikes until they die. I usually will create a few perches that I can stand out and shoot them from, but it isnt necessary. The spikes will usually take care of the horde on their own.

 

Aftermath: Clean up and repair is extremely easy! The zombies tend to bore a small hole into your house, usually you can just walk through, chop up any corpses inside and place new spikes down. Then seal up the hole with wood, you can use more resilient materials if you want, but the whole point of this design is to let the zombies come in and die on the spikes.

 

 

 

This design is not very elaborate, but is very effective against even a day 49 horde (I do not usually play much past day 50 or 60 because at that point as I start to get bored.)

 

The space inside feels somewhat small, but it is by no means cramped. Plus there is a nice porch out back that you can always wall up for extra space if you needed too, but I never do.

 

 

Edit: I have been playing this game for about 5 years now, I have seen quite a few bases in my time, but I am here to tell you that if you do not want a base that requires alot maintenance, digging, and navigating large seas of spikes. You will probably not find an easier base to make that actually works!

 

I can send some screenshots later if you like.

[Aldranon]

I should probably have clarified: I am not really that curious about beginner bases for the first few weeks...just hide behind some spikes and a wall when you need to, and that’ll be fine.

 

I was mostly looking for ideas for what you aim to build at, say, day 40-50...your permanent (or at least long-term) base

 

Only if hordes drop better loot in A17 and underground bases become too dangerous then I would build a "Shoot down, Loot up" base (looks like a shipping container suspended by two 5x5 pillars). Cops cant puke at you until they are point blank range below you.

 

If you don't want to bother with horde night, go to the upper floor.