H1Z1 Base Raiding Guide

H1Z1 Base Raiding Guide by AmorousAlpaca

I am part of a group that has raided at least half the bases on our server and is swimming in a wealth of items acquired this way (no cheats). I think the current system is exceptionally stupid and needs to be fixed asap or there will be no testers left.

Steps for Raiding

Mass produce ethanol. The only limiting factor is sugar and water bottles but those are both common items. Without any effort you should be able to create around 500 ethanol a day.

Raid late at night or during mid day when people are at work.

Bring just the water, corn, and yeast with you (much lighter to carry and since you don’t need any tools or time to make ethanol, you can make a bunch in the field).

Drop ethanol one at a time at a gate and shoot it from distance. You can drop 30 before shooting them, but make sure all 30 are in single stacks. Ethanol does damage based on number of stacks destroyed, not quantity of ethanol used.

Peek which room to raid by going on the roof of it and hitting the prone button. Right before your character would have landed on his belly, hit the prone button again to cancel the prone animation. It will give you a quick peek into the room and you can see if it is an empty room. (Supposedly you can even shoot people inside this way, but I have never tried)

30 or so ethanol and a metal gate is down (aka 6 corn = 1 gate). 10-15 ethanol and a metal door is down (aka 2-3 corn).

With cars having infinite storage (as long as you are taking items that can be stacked) you can empty a base in a single car trip. Remember your character is limited by weight of items, but your car is limited by count of distinct items. Put all large quantity items (bullets, crafting materials, fuel, etc) in the car. Carry all light or non-stackable items in your bags (letters, compass, etc).

When blowing gates, have one person stay in the car (Cars are the best weapon/armor in the game). They can clear zombies, chase off possible players, and protect the car.

Bring a hammer to repair the ground tamper (will put out that stupid fps killing fire on the ground).

When loading the car or destroying a gate, if there is a tampered group near by, stay on that because zombies refuse to walk on tampered ground.

Drop everything else on the ground when you leave because if you can’t have it, no one else can either.

If you have the materials, replace the gate and any visible doors so maybe another group will waste time raiding that instead of your base.

Steps for Defense

Don’t finish all the walls on your structure. If we see 2 or 3 walls missing we will usually just keep driving because the base looks looted already.

Take over an abandoned ruined base and don’t fix it up. Similar to leaving walls off, if you just have a single room in the back of a base with all other walls and doors missing, people wont even get out of the car to check.

Store everything in furnaces near the doors to your shelters. If players use even a little bit too much ethanol when raiding, they can destroy them and at least your loot wont get into their hands. Just be careful to never put wood in them.

Put your stuff on the bottom story as you can protect it from the prone peeking with another shelter. This strategy is even more effective if the second level shelter has a door facing a wall or something so they cannot get in it.

More than 2 gates is a waste (honestly even 2 is a waste because we are talking about 6 vs 12 corn). After 2 gates, the wall next to the gate will blow and people will just jump in there.

Don’t repair your stuff above 90%. You need your base to look abandoned.

Don’t make your base fancy. People are looking for the large elaborate bases with many structures. 1 or 2 structures and unfinished walls makes it look like you quit the server or didn’t really have much more than it took to make what you already have.

Blow ethanol at your front gate (enough to look like it was raided). Ethanol leaves behind a copy of each stack that was blown so people will check this when they come up to your gate to try and decide if the gate was a gate put down by the owner or by raiders as they were leaving.

Don’t use any base you just made. Let it sit looking abandoned for a week or so. People need to get use to seeing it on the map so they ignore it. Maybe you will get lucky and someone will come by and raid it, giving it that already raided look (and taking them off the likely roster of groups that will raid it). Then you can replace a couple of the missing doors and use the base.

For long term storage, consider putting it in a blocked off structure. IE put it in a shelter where the door is blocked by another shelter. Then when you need to get into that long term storage, you can demo the blocking shelter. You will need the blocking shelter’s door to be accessible because demo hammers only work on the inside of structures.

If you are lucky enough to fight people while they are raiding your base. Don’t worry about defeating them, just get their names and destroy their car if you can. If you destroy their car, they will usually not have enough ethanol to finish and it will give you time to transfer stuff out of your base. If you get their names, you can raid their base later.

If you notice people raiding though, that base is done, even if you chase them off, they will come back when you are at work or in bed.