Welcome to Dev Blog 5 - Week 76 of the DayZ Badlands expansion. 

This dev blog was written by our colleagues from the design team, along with editorial support from our art and marketing teams. It’s focused on a major feature that is coming to DayZ Badlands: the rebuilding system, specifically in regard to base building. 

Before we start, we’d like you to know that the team is actively following your reaction to the dev blogs, collecting feedback, and having a blast while doing so. We thank you for all your love and opinions. We really enjoy putting these together and hope you’ll wishlist DayZ Badlands here.  

This is an interesting one, so buckle up! 

Disclaimer
The information shared in our development blog reflects a work in progress. The details discussed are subject to change before release. We intend to share these progress updates to provide some insights into the development process and foster community trust. Thank you for joining us on the road to Nasdara!

We hinted at this a long time ago when we first published our DayZ Badlands Steam store page. Some of you may have speculated then, and now we are confirming it. Here is the teaser we showcased at Convergence Fest yesterday.

Having a base in Nasdara will be a significantly unique experience. Instead of just placing modular fences with gates in open fields, you will also be able to rebuild and/or barricade a selection of houses. Nasdara being a disputed territory/borderland prone to armed conflicts allows us to justify scattering some of these broken down structures throughout the terrain. It should make sense aesthetically and functionally.

<A selection of building that can be rebuilt or barricaded>

The overarching goal of rebuilding mechanics on bases is for every server to tell a different story over time. On one server, a town not far from the spawn point could be fully restored and fiercely defended. On another, the same town could still be rubble. On one server, a building could be fully restored and used by a squad and fenced around the perimeter as a full-on base. On another, the same building could be partially blockaded by a single player holding on to their dear loot. Players will be able to shape the environment just by playing, and no two servers will feel the same after a few days. This also applies to wells! Some wells may be fully restored, while others need your labor and the labor of another friendly you met, to be able to get drinking water. Or maybe you are a giving person who’d restore wells for the convenience of all players (we hope you’ve all met such players).

But we digress. Let’s get specific about base building.  

Once you jump into Nasdara, we are sure you will instantly know which houses are rebuildable. That’s what we observed at the LAN party we recently held for our content creators. At first, you’ll likely discover these when you open your inventory indoors. Then you’ll learn to differentiate later on down the line. There are approximately 20 variants of these broken down houses. 

<Mud house vs Stone house>

There are specifically two types: mud houses and stone houses as shown below. Both will have varying degrees of destruction. They will also reflect the socio-economic background of the previous owners. Stone houses were owned by more affluent people and tend to have different stories, whereas mud ones were owned by commoners. This will be just a cosmetic difference. 

This does not extend to the level of durability or “the raid-ability” of the houses. The durability is largely dependent on the materials you will use to restore the houses (discussed further in the section below). The amount of materials you need also depends on how destroyed the structures are (i.e. the degree of destruction). Some houses may need a heap of materials to restore everything, including some parts of the roof. Meanwhile, others may only need you to add a door and windows.

<Barricaded Room>

Another interesting thing about rebuilding is that it is completely optional if you don’t want to entirely rebuild the structure. You can choose a room, block off an entrance fully, put the doors in another, put in the window, and call it a day. You can limit and manage as much as you want.  Here’s an example video of us restoring a two-storied house.

https://youtu.be/zX-Bfw_vXM0?si=9PVm4-93z_sePmyoThere are over 5,000 rebuildable houses strategically placed around Nasdara. As you move further from the cities and into more of a back-country setting, you will see houses that are more torn down, houses that are in need of a lot of materials to restore. This is intentional in order to keep these damaged buildings further away from areas with potential foot traffic and in smaller and more rural locations. Essentially, it’s harder to repair them, but they are in the most ideal locations for bases. You might be wondering, “Why bother restoring buildings when I can stick to a house in its default state?” Aside from bragging rights, and having a base in a sweet location, cleaning out the rubble of torn down houses can yield a certain number of building materials. Speaking of which...

You may have already noticed the trowel in our teaser above. This is a new tool to accompany new materials: brick and mortar. In addition to these, you can still use previous regular materials like logs, planks, and metal sheets to restore.

<Top: Wooden wall + Brick Wall | Bottom: Brick Walls>

There are a few distinct ways to restore and barricade houses: 

• wooden restoration

• brick restoration

• wooden + sheet metals for windows and doors

• brick wall to barricade the door

Of course, it’s not an either-or situation, as you can mix and match all of the available resources you can get your hands on. As we said above, since the damaged state of the houses can vary, and you have to manage your resources, you really have to consider your choices of building rooms that you'd want as your base. The picture below shows the same model of a house in various states.

The code lock is probably the most requested community item, and now we are finally caving in. It feels relevant to introduce this with Nasdara, given its history and the setting of the land, but we won’t be revealing too much yet. Base building will be the primary usage, of course, both on the new rebuildable doors and on existing fences. 

If you are on PC, you know by now that the community has already done a great job modding this. It is similar to that community code lock, but with the additional work on input handlings for controllers, which makes it accessible for console players. You will also need a charged V9 battery for it to work. It will stop working and automatically unlock if the battery power runs out, which can be observed on the back of the lock indoors. This means you will need to check the batteries from time to time and maintain the code lock to keep it functional. 

The code lock can be damaged if it is not attached to a door. If it ends up damaged, you’ll need to repair it with electronic kits.  As long as it is attached to a door, it should be indestructible. The code lock also has features like "brute force protection," so that other players cannot repeatedly guess the PIN without any consequences. The protection period starts after a certain number of wrong PIN attempts. That’s when the lock will temporarily refuse new code entries and give a warning response instead. This protection escalates with continued failed attempts, but resets after a correct PIN, after enough time has passed, or when the lock is unlocked from within.

Thank you very much for reading.

This dev blog is a little different from the others as we didn’t discuss our work on the feature, but rather the feature itself. We know this is what you’ve been waiting for, so excuse us for cutting to the chase and dumping a bunch of info. Hope you are as excited as we are. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with the new rebuilding mechanics on Nasdara. We haven’t decided on the topic of the next dev blog yet. We’ll get back to you on this very soon.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3816030/DayZ_Badlands/For now, please wishlist DayZ Badlands! Tell your friends to wishlist DayZ Badlands! Hold up other survivors at gunpoint and tell them to wishlist DayZ Badlands! You know what you need to do! Tell them the devs sent you.

And in case you haven’t heard, the release window for DayZ Badlands is in October.

Big love,  
The DayZ Team

Contributors

The Goal of Rebuilding: Özgür, Lynn
Rebuildable Bases: Revu, Lynn
Building Materials: Özgür, Lynn
The Code Lock: Steve, Lynn
Capture Support Screenshots: Lynn
Capture Support Video: Mark
Editorial Support: Özgür, Tom, Lynn