7 Days to Die Base Building for A20

Location, Location, Location

This part is basically a copy of the old guide, because it's as valid as it ever was: You know the old saying, in real estate the three main criteria are location, location and location. True as well here. What you want is an area that's relatively flat, that's not on top of a hill or even has some steep inclines on either side (so Zs can't spawn there and dig through the incline and underneath your base, which could make it collapse), preferably in the Forest biome (for temperature reasons) and not too far from a town, for looting reasons, but also not too close to one, for Z spawning reasons.

Also, you want it close to your main trader, but not too close so you don't run into the problem that you suddenly can't draw another circle of blade traps around your base because you hit the Trader barrier. But about 25 blocks away should be fine, make it 50 and you're golden.

Foundation Work

Once you found a flat place, dig out a square area, one block deep and 9x9 blocks wide (if you play by yourself) or 15x15 blocks (if you play with friends). Your eventual "inside" footprint will be 4 blocks less than what you dig now, i.e. if you dig 9x9, your inside room will be 5x5 blocks.

You want to dig large enough to put in your forges, workbenches and whatever else you need, but not too big so you run into problems getting the materials.

I recommend a square base, simply due to how physics work in this game and because it is generally easier to defend. Eventually, you should have a hole, one deep and 9x9 to 15x15, like this:

First Blocks

Fill that 9x9 (or 15x15) square with wood frame block, then upgrade them to wood. Yes, you can place down wood blocks right away, but that way you get quite a big of xp for upgrading the blocks.

Next, find a rock nearby and hit it with your stone axe. From the rocks and the clay you dug out from the foundation work, you can craft cobblestone rocks. Do that early, you'll need LOTS of them and the earlier you start crafting them, the better.

Upgrade the outer two rows of blocks to cobblestone, like in this picture:

Note: If you play alone, you might have a hard time getting all the materials in time. In this case, start with the "inner" wall (you'll see what I mean in a minute) and leave the "outer" for now until you have the inner one at least at 4 high and made out of wood, better cobblestone.

Building The Walls

Take your wood shapes, press and hold R and choose the topmost icon to choose a different shape. From the shapes, choose the "Cube 1/2" one:

Next, hold R again and choose the "advanced" rotation mode:

Now press the left mouse button a few times until you get a "vertical" 1/2 cube. Put it down as the walls of our fortress. You can use the "1/4 cube" and "3/4 cube" for the corners, in the end, you'll have something akin to this:

Again, if you're running out of time, make sure that you get at least the "inner" wall built. What you want to do is put the 1/2 cube for the "inner" wall so that it's on the inside of the block, the one for the "outside" wall should be on the outside of the block so you create a corridor in between, so you essentially get two walls that the Zs have to breach before it gets ugly.

Build the inner wall up 4 blocks, the outer one 3 blocks. In the end, after you upgraded it all to cobblestone, it should look a bit like this:

The reason for the outer wall being one "short" is that you want the topmost wall to be built from "3/4 cubes" that are turned (with advanced rotate) so that it looks like an inverted L. Like this:

For the corners, use those "7/8 blocks" that are basically missing a chunk. Again, advanced rotate is your friend.

The reason for this is that you can walk across the top without the danger of falling down, while at the same time you can still shoot down in case Zombies get in between your walls somewhere.

Metal Bars To Shoot Down Through

This is something you will likely not have available in the first days, maybe even not for your first blood moon, but it's something you absolutely want to have eventually: Iron bars to stand on and shoot down through.

You'll need a forge to make them and you'll need insane amounts of iron (250 a piece). Sadly, with A20 they took away the wooden bars that you could use as a stopgap for the first blood night, so what you can do now is to build a "shooting platform" on every side for the first blood moon, something to step out on and shoot down from. At the very least build one for over your door, because for now the door will be the weakest point in your defense.

Take that (non-centered) bar and, using advanced rotate, rotate is so that it attaches to the top of the outer wall block.

If you finally have enough of them to do it all around, it would look something like this:

I do recommend putting a fence around it so you don't fall off in the heat of the battle. Eventually that fence will be made of metal bars as well, but, as stated before, curently you probably have barely the bars to make it all around the walls, let alone have any to spare for a handrail.

Tear The Roof Off The Mother... Wait, Let's Rather Put One On.

With the return of the vultures, it pays to be prepared for airborne threats. Since they will not really attack in force, wood will do for now.

Since in A20 poles have been nerfed when it comes to their durability, we'll be using cenered 1/4 cubes that still retain the full durability of the full block. You can of course use any 1/4 block, the centered ones just are the ones that got the least into my way, but anything that makes you happy should do.

Put 2 1/4 block cobblestones on top of each other to form a column, do that 8 times on the inner wall, then put solid blocks on top. Move 3 blocks to the outside from the middle to get a roof that overlaps your bars by a block, that way the vultures would have to come down to eye level even if you're outside on the ledge and can't swoop down at you. Personally, I'm partial to 60degree inclined blocks, but that's just my aesthetics, solids should also do the trick.

Final Prep For The First Blood Moon

You want to slap down a claim block in the middle of the base to ensure you can pick up and store the valuables (like forge and, if you have one, a workbench) somewhere safe during blood night. You can e.g. replace the center block in the base with it.

Then get the doors upgraded as far as you can, if you only have iron, that will do, if you already have iron bars, that's perfect.

Gather some more wood and get a row, better two, of wood spikes around your base. If you have the metal to do so, put a few metal spikes down in front of your door since that's still the weakest point. But with this setup, there should be very little trouble in your first blood night, unless something really weird happened and your game stage went through the roof for some reason, you shouldn't face any spitters or exploders, and everything else isn't a big deal. Spiders can't climb your base, we have a roof against vultures and everything else can be convinced to die with enough lead thrown their way.

Where To Go From Here

Next thing you want after you have this is a cement mixer so you can upgrade your walls to cement. Eventually you want to completely fill that bottom floor with cement blocks and rest on top of a huge, multi-100,000 HP block of concrete. Next to it you build a ramp along with a drawbridge that lets you enter your top floor, which also pretty much ensures that zombies need to pummel through that concrete slab if they want to get you.

The most important defense that you still need to get is the electrical fence. E-fences are very important to keep exploding bikers from getting close to your base, since they are pretty much the only thing that could effectively be dangerous to you anymore when you're sitting on that concrete cube. I recommend a row of e-fence, after that a line of blade traps, followed by another circle of e-fence and another line of blade traps.

Yes, there are more effective ways, like luring the zombies into a death alley by giving them a corridor the AI thinks is easier to approach from, but if you want a non-cheesy and actually interesting base, where you don't rely on abusing the stupidity of Z's, this one is it.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2688181338

Base Building for A20