The Last Day on Earth: Survival Guide

Stuck in the aftermath of the apocalypse, surrounded by violent fauna and savage enemies, it’s important to remember your Threes of Survival:

• Three weeks without food.
• Three days without water.
• Three minutes without air.

And out here, in Last Day on Earth: Survival? You’ll last about three seconds without a plan. Lucky for you, we’ve mapped out a solid route for the first 24 hours you’ll spend naked and afraid. Follow our advice, don’t make too much noise, and before long you’ll be hunting zombies and grilling bears in no time. 

First, you’re going to want to…

Establish Your Basics

Spear, hatchet, pickaxe. These three tools are the earliest possible schematics you can learn, and the bread and butter items from which most other items flow. So as soon as you drop into the game in your home zone, check the nearby broken down car for loot. 

Then set about collecting 9 Pine Logs, 6 Limestone, and learning all 3 schematics. We recommend building the hatchet and pickaxe first, as no enemies in this area are so tough a few right hooks can’t handle them — but your hands aren’t so hot at breaking limestone deposits or trees.

While they’re technically not 100% necessary for harvesting raw materials or defending yourself, these three tools save valuable time and effort — and both of them are at a premium when you’re trying to get a new base camp off the ground in time to defend against the Horde. 

Not, not the one with the orcs. The other kind. Zombies. It’s a zombie horde – and it’s coming for you. So you might want to…

Fortify Your Position

With tools in hand and a few levels under your belt, the next move is to make roughing it a little less rough. The Casual Backpack, Garden Bed, Raincatcher, and a small house (big enough for a Small Box or two and some space for later additions) are next on the list. 

The Backpack makes harvesting and transportation of items much easier, doubling your total inventory space from your basic Pockets. The Garden Bed and Raincatcher help keep you stocked on provisions and keep hunger and dehydration at bay. (Just make sure to keep any empty containers from used food or water.)

Lastly, make sure to secure your base in a full wrap-around with a door. The magical sanctity of “home base” is apparently only beatable with C4, keeping most of your belongings safe in case of invasion or light zombie attacks. 

Speaking of zombie attacks — a wooden spear and some shorts isn’t going to cut it against most hordes. You’re going to want to…

Hunt for Upgrades

While a certain functional set of gear is eventually craftable, we’re concerned with the first, most important hours of survival where every second is crucial and every advantage matters. You’ll be able to fashion your own get-up one day. But for now? You’ll need to scavenge for it. 

When you finally leave your nest, keep your eyes peeled for three major things on the world map — Alpha Base, downed airplanes, and Army supply drops. While the supply drops range from kind of useful to “mid game” parts, the downed aircraft and Alpha Base (accessible once you take the A card from the corpse out front) are almost always good for a serviceable (if rough around the edges) military suit and a gun. 

Despite the temptation of blasting nearby enemies in 2-5 hits (dealing double the spear’s damage at a much higher rate), try to save your ammo for the horde and let your spear do most of the heavy lifting while exploring. And as long as you’re exploring green areas (denoted by the icon above them on the world map), you can probably stash your armor at home as well.

Ignore the base’s Code Vault for now (since it doesn’t actually do anything currently), get your upgrades ready, and try to grind out as much as you safely can. While zombies might be worth about 5x a gathering tick, most gathering nodes have at least 5 or so whacks in them and don’t threaten your life.

Follow these steps in order and you should be well on your way to a secure base of operations (and plenty of other necessities), with plenty of time to level up before the Horde rears its ugly head. Don’t get distracted by all the cool stuff you can make, though — always keep your basics handy, and remember that you should be focusing on one thing and one thing only during your Last Day on Earth: Survival. And that’s making it through the night.

If you need more help with this mobile game, check out the rest of our Last Day on Earth guides to get you through this unforgiving zombie land:

• Last Day on Earth: Survival FAQ — Base Alfa Vault Code, Chopper Gas Tank, and Events
• Last Day on Earth: How to Upgrade Your Base With Oak Trees, Steel, and More
• How to Get Water and Cloth in Last Day on Earth: Survival
• Last Day on Earth: Survival — How to Get Every Weapon