For a certain period of time, I am tormented by the question, where is the best place to settle? which building to capture? live in the city? in a bunker in the middle of a field? or build a mobile home? All this time, my characters didn’t have a specific base, and I began to wonder where to best equip it.
1 Like
That really depends on your playstyle.
I usually make my base* in a random building, mostly on the edge of a city, but sometimes also in the middle of a town, in a cabin, a LMOE shelter, in “normal” shelters, in farm buildigns, in labs or even a camping ground somewhere in the forrest.
I’ve yet to “take over”/settle in an evacuation center.
I don’t like mobile bases, so I often stick to just a easy to clear out building.
*By “base” I mean a permanent place I always return to until the character dies (sometime even beyond that) or I create a new world.
Every time I built a base camp I’ve chosen the field, though. Just because I like how I can expand in all directions.
1 Like
In my newly created world with the mutant character runaway from the lab, there is a LMOE bunker that stands literally like a simple house in a huge city, on its outskirts. there was even a road leading to it, and there were very few zombies in the area, so I temporarily decided to settle there, but I still have no idea where the best place to settle is.
1 Like
My current lineage of completionist-ish @s each looks for a spot near a river with an indoor space, right near a convenient drive-up unloading spot.
The river will be used to generate power. So, it has to be in the reality bubble, for time spent on the base: crafting, unloading, sleeping, mostly. As I understand it, that means within 120-ish tiles, aka about two and a half overmap tiles. I prefer water over wind, solar, or fuels - since I want it to be consistent.
The indoor space will end up as 13×13. In the best case, it already is at least that large - but I’m okay taking out or adding a dozen or so walls. Building the space would take too long time for me, with 50+ walls and nearly 200 roofs. Not a lot of buildings have enough space, without having a bunch of collapsing from taking out walls. So far, steel mills abide very well, and light industry is workable. As a plus, they both also have steel gates in the right place. I imagine there are other buildings with enough space that my @s haven’t yet found near rivers, too.
Standing in the center of the indoor space, all of its tiles are within 6 spaces and can be accessed for crafting. I aim to build warehouse shelves and all crafting stations.
It really depends on what you plan on doing.
To be honest, it’s the apocalypse. There’s no “best place”.
Basically: You either take a “good enough” one and make it work or you’ll die (you might die anyway).
Well, it was probably stupid to ask such simple questions, but thanks anyway to those who answered.
Based on the sample size of 1 character, I recommend garages. They are reasonably secure, secluded and have two wide garage doors, so you can drive right in and then close the doors behind you. Having flowing water nearby is also important, water wheels are IMO the best power source available.
The only downside to a garage is the lack of a basement, but a few NPCs can fix that in a day.
A fully underground garage - once you have enough concrete to make the ramps, is probably ideal. With another downstair a bit farther out for potential escape and to connect the water wheels to the equipment in the basement.
2 Likes
Personally, I always find a home on the outskirts of decently large city, and I use that home as my base/storage while I slowly clear out the surrounding suburbs/city blocks. I then eventually have located enough armored and electric vehicles to gather all the parts I need to build my own deathmobile(about the size of an RV, I like to build them from scratch)
Afterwards, I begin exploring the world searching for things I want (like more ammo) and I roleplay a bit(gathering an arsenal for the potential army ill build!, or guns I’ll donate to the oldguard or trade with) My plan is to have a fully functional deathmobile but after ive gathered some npcs, and have found a place I like ie, not close to fungal monsters, somewhat near the refuge center
I think I’ll try and take my hand at building both a faction camp as well as my own crafted apocolypse base with everything I might want! I found some animals and I thought it would be pretty cool if a couple years into the apoclypse(still only 1 year in) I was making icecream from cows I rescued and protected/had a walledfield for them to roam about in! I will not live in a hole in the ground! But my own handcrafted palace, where I can park my deathmobile! and leave some npcs to guard!.(ive never gotten this far though, but I think I’ll be able to this time! :D)
As others have said, it very much depends on your play style and future plans.
My single character so far started with an LMOE for a few days while exploring the area, avoiding anything but isolated houses. A bit later he found a farm of the kind with a house surrounded by farm plots, a pair of locked metal silos with wheat, a barn (with a few zombies and a tractor in it), and a paddock. He settled there for several months, starting to plant seeds found as they were collected. Then he moved into a luxury RV (found in pristine condition) parked outside the farm house (the magic A/C in vehicles is very handy) and started to build a base camp just beside the farm, which allowed the crops to be harvested (and replanted) during the summer, and eventually moved the RV and the craftmobile built to the base camp (a distance of a whopping 3-4 tiles) to live there instead.
I would have liked to have a river nearby, but solar + wind with storage batteries is good enough.
My next character (after 0.F stable has been released) will likely try to use a similar approach, with the addition of an underground garage under the base camp (which isn’t possible in 0.E2 stable, which I used).
Casting aside the obvious “it really depends” - which, to be honest, it really, really depends on what you want to do, how long you want to keep that character alive for, etc - I usually have several choices:
- Cabin
It has the layout and the “furniture” I need to work as storage (which allows me to organise things in specific categories and their proximity close to a crafting space or close to the exit/entrance). It has the potential to have all the raw materials I need to build a wooden stove if the Cabin doesn’t have a fireplace too. It also has a backyard which (personally) I like to re-arrange and make it a nice place to read, practice martial arts or do long crafting sessions, as well as a safe hub for a solar powered generator.
- LMOE
Often secluded, but it has the advantage of being a mainly underground setup, which means you can survive Summer and Winter very easily just by remaining there and doing all your crafting things for the duration of the season. It also has the added bonus of having the water tanks (and potentially the thingies that provide you with unlimited water) as well as more often than not having really good forage nearby. It may have a few accessibility issues but you can always spend your downtime cutting a path through the forest to make it accessible.
- The Hub
Really good parking space for starters. Once it starts getting too crowded you can, branch out and create your own “vehicle-house” either within its walls or just outside it. You have the chance to get ammo, ID cards, CBMs and 'nades from the trader every once in a while, and you can also get rid of your surplus trash in return. Sadly the major disadvantage is that the Hub is often too far from towns, so food may become a problem.
- Farmhouses/Rural Houses/Sugar Houses
Great food sources, great layouts for a simple base and more often than not you’ll get a basement you can go into to escape the extreme temperatures. Also amazing parking space if you want to make a self-sustainable energy source.
- Military Bunkers
Often spawn near forests and most of the time I seem to come across a pond not too far off either. The ones with the Autodoc have a fantastic setup where all you really need is to get food and drinks from the outside, everything else is there, added to the fact its a near-impenetrable base to set up in.
- Light Industry
A great place for raw materials - and the added bonus of having a cargo truck parked near the “warehouse” side of things. Tons of tools, several vending machines and a few interesting books. Lacks in term of places to break line of sight, so if a random horde wanders towards you while you’re sleeping, it can be hard to deal with them.
- Labs
Obviously. You have libraries, infinite water sources, tons of food possibilities, living quarters, CBMs, autodocs, potential for guns, ammo and good equipment, mutagen materials and tools, temperature control (… for the most part) and barely no danger if you know how to use the environment and which hazards exist in each room. Ample parking space outside too, which becomes significantly more useful if the groundfloor has a bedding area (meaning you can, essentially make it a solar-powered base above ground).
- Bandit Buildings (Garage, Special Cabin);
If you manage to clear out the traps and make it reasonably safe, these are often quite useful because they are somewhat away from the main roads, and more often than not the layout is fantastic if you are a minimalist and want to set up in one room only, while having space for your vehicle and several sleeping quarters for potential NPC sidekicks. The major disadvantage is the fact these are build of wood so… keep “specific” special zombies away from it otherwise you won’t like the end result.
1 Like
I’ll make armored vehicles and base them on military bases, where I store a lot of the items I’ve collected in the past five months.
the best options I tried seemed to me to be LMOE bunkers and military bunkers, but I’m also interested in other options that I may not even know about
Specifically at this moment, my character’s main task is to survive. Having escaped from the laboratory, in which there were suspiciously very few zombies, literally 5 pieces on 4 floors, as well as getting a couple of bionics and mutations, reading a little books, and running along the roads, the only region not infected with mushrooms is a huge city, on the very edge of which, not far from the already empty laboratory, there is an LMOE bunker, I do not know which of the types of LMOE bunkers is the best, but I came across one that is completely sheathed with steel walls and has everything you need, except for an eternal supply of food
What do you mean basement? I never found any basement under farmhouses. Which kind of house are you talking about?
There are farmhouses(?) or rural houses that have an underground thing with several kegs, seeds, foodstuffs etc. The same way there is/was a type of rural house/farmhouse that had a rear-entrance with a “ramp” (so, not a ladder/set of steps, but an actual ramp) to a food storage as well - they might not be in-game anymore.
I bundled them all together as I am not quite sure which was which, and they are very much similar in terms of contents (ie tons of food and good resources, which was the selling point).
How long ago was that? Because I don’t remember seeing any underground storage. There are barns, full of zombies. There are farms without barns, or with greenhouses, of full of animals. So I’m somewhat confused.
potters cottage has an outside ramp.
That is a Farmhouse (3x4 on the overworld map as outlined in the first screenshot). And there is another variant which I couldnt find after searching for 3 whole world sections. As you can see, there’s a neat basement for the grabs there.
That is also a nice place to stay at, despite being small, but with the -1 and the +1 levels, it offers a lot of safety.
As far as I can see, there is a nest of crabs on the shore, unfortunately my luck did not allow me to meet them, one of the information from Wikipedia says that they are quite dangerous opponents, are you not afraid to go to the city so easily with such neighbors?