What you're doing

Daylight is for work: dig the ground, mine rocks, loot cars and landmark buildings, and turn all of it into walls, towers, wire and turrets around your base. When the sun drops the horde spawns around you and runs faster than you can. Hold until dawn, repeat, and keep pushing towards the radio.

Health and hydration both need managing all the time — thirst slows you down and eventually kills you, and every zombie hit is expensive. Bring the radio its parts, survive the countdown, and board the helicopter.

A typical first day

Drink at the well. Open the map to find the nearest landmark. Dig on the way — the ground gives planks and iron about one tile in five. Loot the landmark chest, deal with the dead inside, and be back behind at least a few wood walls before the screen darkens.

How many come each night

Night 1 sends the difficulty's base count plus one zombie per player. Every night after that takes the previous count, adds one per player again, and multiplies the total by a random factor rolled from the difficulty's range.

Solo on Hard that's 7 zombies on night 1, then roughly 8 to 13 on night 2, and it compounds from there.

The boss

From night 3 a boss can join the wave: 20% on night 3, +10% every night after, certain by night 11. A second boss unlocks on night 5, a third on night 7, a fourth on night 9 — each extra one starts at 10% (+5% per night) and is only rolled if the previous boss showed up. See Boss.

Grabs

Every zombie attack has a 33% chance to grab you. A grab locks you in place for its duration — in the middle of a wave, that's usually how a run ends. Keep walls between you and the horde and shoot through the gaps from a tower.

When you die

You leave a lootable body behind with everything you were carrying, and you switch to spectator mode to watch your teammates. In co-op, a teammate can recover your gear from the corpse. Solo, the run is over.

Weather multiplies the drain

A full bar lasts four minutes of clear daylight and barely a minute and a half in a sandstorm. Plan trips around the sky — see Weather.

The well

There's exactly one well, at your spawn. It starts with a limited number of drinks that scales with the difficulty and the number of players, and it only refills when it rains.

Behaviour

Zombies path around obstacles using the navigation grid. When the route is blocked they lock onto the nearest wall and hit it until it breaks, then keep coming. Getting shot — by you or a turret — pulls their aggro for five seconds. They don't shoot back, and they never stop.

Where they spawn

Night waves spawn about 4 000 px out (≈125 tiles) from a random living player, one every 1.3 seconds until the night's count is reached. Landmark buildings also hold zombies inside from the moment they appear: 0–3 in a police station, 1–3 in a hospital, 2–3 in a military base, 1–2 in a warehouse.

When he shows up

Each extra boss is only rolled if the previous one spawned that night, and there are never more than four. In practice: night 3 is the first roll, night 11 guarantees one, and long runs are a boss rush.

What it costs to kill him

Hit chance still applies to every one of those rounds — the counts above assume you're close. Two turrets, powered, put out 12 shots a second between them: 84 shots is seven seconds of him standing in the wire.

How to fight him

He walks at your speed, so you can't kite him on foot — but the quad is three times faster and he only takes 25 off it per bump. Barbed wire holds him still inside turret range, a tower keeps you out of reach of the knockback, and every wall between you and him buys exactly one hit's worth of time.

Range bands

Every weapon has four range bands. Your chance to hit falls as the target moves from one band to the next; the crosshair colour tells you which band you're in.

Ammo & where to find it

• Pistol roundsPolice 1–2 · Military 0–3 · digging 1%

Pistols themselves sit in police station chests (50%) and warehouses (20%). On Hard you start with one and two rounds; on Easy you start with a shotgun instead.

Range bands

Every weapon has four range bands. Your chance to hit falls as the target moves from one band to the next; the crosshair colour tells you which band you're in.

Ammo & where to find it

• AK roundsMilitary 0–2 · digging 1%

AK-47s come from military base chests (35%). One AK plus one wire plus two iron also builds a Turret — decide whether you want the gun or the emplacement.

Range bands

Every weapon has four range bands. Your chance to hit falls as the target moves from one band to the next; the crosshair colour tells you which band you're in.

Ammo & where to find it

• 12-gauge shellsPolice 0–2 · Military 0–2

Shotguns are in police station chests (30%) and military bases (15%). Easy starts you with one and 12 shells.

Damage falls off to a minimum of 15% at max range: a point-blank blast one-shots any zombie on any difficulty, a shot from 300 px barely scratches.

Range bands

Every weapon has four range bands. Your chance to hit falls as the target moves from one band to the next; the crosshair colour tells you which band you're in.

Ammo & where to find it

• 7.62×54RMilitary 0–2

Only military base chests carry the sniper (20%) and its rounds. Its hit chance starts at 85% point-blank and never drops below 50% even at 1 800 px.

Where to find it

Hospital chests (25%) and warehouses (30%). It's the Psycho starting weapon, and the fallback on every other difficulty when the last box of ammo goes.

Against the boss

Every swing is inside knockback range and he hits for 60. A thousand health points is a lot of one-in-three rolls. Not recommended.

How zombies treat your base

A zombie with no path to you locks onto the nearest blocking wall and hits it every second for 15 (the boss: 150). When it breaks, it moves on to the next one. Structures don't repair themselves — demolish and rebuild, or build a second layer behind the first.

Planks come mostly from digging (10% per tile) and warehouse chests (2–6). Six of them also make a Watch tower.

Stone comes from mining rock formations (walk up to a rock and mine it) and from warehouse chests (2–6). Digging only turns up stone 4% of the time.

Each wire wears out after dealing 200 damage in total — two and a half Hard zombies. Powered by a Generator it electrifies, doubles its damage and burns through that budget twice as fast, but everything standing in it dies twice as quickly.

Towers are what turn a walled square into a defensible base: you shoot the horde while it hits the wall, instead of while it hits you. AI companions head for any free tower when night falls and hold position until dawn, so build one per squad member.

Ammo

Interact next to the turret to load AK rounds from your inventory. Each magazine is 30 shots; it holds up to 18 (540 shots) and comes with two when built. Unpowered, a magazine lasts 15 seconds of continuous fire and kills about four Hard zombies.

Targeting

It re-targets the closest zombie every 0.15 s and won't fire through walls. Zombies it hits pull aggro onto it for five seconds — expect it to take hits, and put wire in front of it.

Fuel

Insert a car battery or a jerrycan; each gives 100 fuel, burned at 0.5 per second — three minutes twenty of power. Gas runs the wider radius. It holds both tanks separately and switches between them.

What it powers

What's in the chest

• Pistol50%
• Shotgun30%
• Pistol rounds1–2 boxes
• Shells0–2 boxes
• Planks40% · 1–2
• Iron30% · 1–2

What's in the chest

• Medkit0–1
• Axe25%
• Water rations40% · 0–2
• Planks30% · 0–2
• Iron20% · 0–2

What's in the chest

• AK-4735%
• Sniper20%
• Shotgun15%
• AK rounds0–2
• Sniper rounds0–2
• Pistol rounds40% · 0–3
• Shells30% · 0–2
• Medkits25% · 0–2

What's in the chest

• Stone2–6
• Iron2–5
• Planks2–6
• Electric wire20% · 1–2
• Axe30%
• Pistol20%
• Water rations25% · 0–2

The whole objective lives on its own page: Repair the radio & extract. Here's what to know about the building itself: it lights up once repaired, its console is the interaction point for deposits and for starting the rescue, and a generator whose radius covers the console halves the wait.

Material	Builds	Digging	Mining	Chests	Cars
Plank	Wood wall (1) · Tower (6)	10% per tile	—	Warehouse 2–6 · Police/Hospital 0–2	—
Iron	Wire (1) · Turret (2) · Generator (3)	10% per tile	—	Warehouse 2–5 · Police/Hospital 0–2	1–3 every car
Stone	Stone wall (1)	4% per tile	Every rock	Warehouse 2–6	—

Digging

Switch to search mode and dig any tile: 1.5 seconds each, and you move at 150 instead of 200 while doing it. Seven tiles in ten give nothing; the rest give planks or iron mostly, and occasionally stone, screws, wire, a box of pistol ammo or a car battery.

Mining

Rock formations are scattered across the map. Walk up to one (80 px) and mine it for stone — it's the main stone source, and rocks don't run out fast.

The map screen

Open the map to see explored ground, your position, the well and every point of interest you've discovered. Companions reveal fog wherever they wander, so let them roam.

What's out there

Cars (iron, batteries, wire, gas), rock formations (stone), the one well at your spawn, quads waiting to be repaired, and the landmarks. The further you go the more you find — and the longer the walk home before dark.

Repair

Every quad spawns broken with a random repair bill: 0–3 screws, 0–3 wire and 0–1 battery, always at least one part. Interact with it to see and pay the cost.

Fuel

A jerrycan gives 100 fuel, burned at one per second at full throttle. Cars carry gas 15% of the time. The generator wants your jerrycans too — choose.

Step by step

Fortify the station first

Five minutes is a night and a half. Wall the station, put a tower and a turret on the side the last wave came from, and build the generator so the countdown is 2:30 instead of 5:00. Press the button at the start of a day, not the end of one.

Server browser

Find and join active games from the in-game list. The server hosts the world, so a host leaving doesn't end the run.

Lobby

Pick your survivor — John, Jack, Lily or Ben, no duplicates — and vote on the difficulty before the game starts.

Reconnection

Drop mid-run and your survivor is held for 90 seconds; the game retries every four seconds on its own. Rejoin in time and you reclaim your body, position, inventory and all. Miss the window and your survivor becomes a corpse to loot.

Spectator mode

After you die you watch your teammates continue. If they board the helicopter, the run is still won — but you're not on it.