Building a base likely begins by crafting some fences from sticks and placing them around a campfire but the as the player amasses more and better resources they may choose to fortify a position with metal walls or design a maze allowing the player to take down Zombies without incurring any structural damage. The player could also focus on infrastructure, choosing to build wells, smokers, and root cellars over walls, turrets, and traps. Or the player could spend their time on cosmetic alterations, making a flower garden or creating the perfect base layout.

With great risk comes great reward. The abandoned structures, towns, and cities of old America have the highest zombie density but these modern structures may yield loot beyond what the wilderness can provide. As they say, guns and refrigerators don’t grow on trees.

Get to digging and cultivate the land around you. While you’re out foraging and hunting let mother nature put in some work growing your meals. Finding valuable seeds and the tools to care for your growing garden will take time and dedication. It may take weeks for the fruits of your labor to be ready to harvest but the investment can provide a stockpile that will last you the winter.

Get yourself a meal and important resources to level up your survival. Keep warm with the hides you gather and craft fishing hooks and rods for bigger and better catches. Fishing can provide consistent food at a low risk but hunting can yield precious crafting resources like hides to survive the cold months.

Spending time gathering resources like wood, ore, fiber, and so on provides the necessary materials to craft increasingly effective items, shelters, weapons, tools and more. Most resources require tools to harvest, be it an axe to chop down a tree, a shovel to dig up a plant, or a pickaxe to mine a rock. There are common resources like wood and stone but for more advanced crafting recipes the player may have to scour the world for rare biomes and materials such as the bog providing vital peat and bog-iron. Diverse world biomes motivate exploration and can determine what makes a base location good or bad.

A lone zombie might be taken down with a club but greater numbers warrant more advanced equipment. Are you a stealthy sniper, picking off zombies one at a time with a bow before retreating? Or a katana-wielding madman capable of wading into the thick of the horde and coming out the sole survivor

It's important to make use of the downtime in between hunting and looting expeditions: crafting arrows, weaving cordage for building, fleshing hides for tanning, reloading your weapons, and more -- preparation is vital to success.