Camp and bases

A fire is where you catch your breath. Look at a lit fire and choose Sit by the fire. You heal slowly, your stamina comes back, and the camp panel opens: tend the fire, cook (see Fires and cooking), listen to the radio, plan a route, check the stores, or sit with a companion. Any movement key gets you up.

Sleep

Sleep in a bed, a sofa or a bedroll of your own or your squad's. You sleep better under a roof, when you're warm and dry, and inside your own base. Six hours of good sleep wakes you rested for an hour. See Sleep and exhaustion.

Planning a route

From the camp panel, choose up to five stops: places you know, your bases, radio intel you pinned, or a spot you mark on the map. You'll see the distance and time for each, and anything you heard on the radio near it. Set out draws one route with numbered pins.

Building

Use a building kit from your inventory to see a ghost of the piece, then place it. The controls, the house pieces and how they stand up to a raid are in Building a house, and power, doors and furniture in Power, doors and furniture. You can't build in or near safe zones or story areas.

Claiming a base

A Base Cupboard claims the ground around it, and only people on its list can build there. The list doesn't open your containers or doors: their locks do (see Storage and locks). Keep its stash stocked with materials and nothing in the claim decays. Upgrade walls with a hammer from wood to reinforced, metal and concrete. Each grade takes much more punishment.

Raids and hordes

• Other players can only damage your base during the weekly raid windows, and never once everyone on the list has been offline for fifteen minutes.
• Factions may steal from your stores while you're away, but they never damage what you've built.
• Hordes come to bases that are big, loud and lit up at night. A powered Base Radio gives everyone a minute's warning.
• A Ward Chime keeps the dead from wandering up inside its range. It doesn't stop a horde.

Things go wrong

Generators stall and breakers trip, rain shorts the wiring, barrels leak, rats get into the food, something scratches at the weakest wall, and sometimes a stranger waits at the gate. The cupboard lists what needs doing and on which side of the base it is.