Gate of the Dead · player guide
The camp
The camp is your home screen and the engine behind everything else. It's a map of Riverside Depot you can drag and zoom. Every building shows its level, a clock means it's being built, and fog covers the parts of town that haven't opened yet.
Reading the screen
Along the top are your counters: Scrap Metal, timber, steel, food, water, survivors (housed out of beds) and the Mayor's energy. Along the bottom are your building crews, the Collect button and a strip listing every building with its level, which is handy for finding things on a busy map. Tap any building, on the map or in the strip, to open its sheet: what it does, what the next level costs in timber, steel, time and energy, and what's in the way if you can't build it yet.
Parts of town open as you go
The camp starts in the Gate Yard. The rest of town opens in stages, and each part has plots for particular buildings:
| Part of town | Opens | What goes there |
|---|---|---|
| The Gate Yard | From the start | Headquarters, Gate, the first shelters, First-aid Tent, Woodpile, Scrap Heap, Lookout, Bike Rack, Watch House, Radio |
| The Square | Headquarters 2 | The Canteen and a shelter |
| The Fields | Finish chapter 1 | Veg Patches, Rain Barrels, the Barn and a shelter |
| Workshop Row | Finish chapter 2 | The Armoury, the Bullet Farm and a shelter |
| Clinic Hill | Finish chapter 3 | The Leaders' Hall, the School and a shelter |
| The Market | Finish chapter 4 | Training Yard, Archery Range, Trading Post and a shelter |
| The River Bank | Finish chapter 5 | The Dock and a shelter |
A building also needs the Headquarters at a certain level before it can be built at all; Every building lists them.
Nothing goes higher than the Headquarters
This is the main rule of the camp. A Woodpile can't go to level 6 until the Headquarters is at 6. So when everything seems stuck, the answer is nearly always "raise the Headquarters".
The Headquarters itself needs survivors to go up: 3 for level 2, 5 for level 3, 8 for level 4, 11 for level 5, 15 for level 6, 19 for level 7, 24 for level 8, and so on up to 120 for level 20. Survivors come from held gate nights, the Road (one every third stage), Rescue missions, chapter chests and, later, the Dock.
The Headquarters changes its look as it grows: a Campfire, then the Depot from level 5, the Town Hall from 10, the Stronghold from 15 and the Citadel from 20. Most buildings change their name and look like this.
Survivors and beds
Survivors need a bed to work. You start with four beds, and each shelter adds two plus its level, so a shelter at level 5 sleeps seven. Several chapter goals ask you to house a number of survivors, which counts only those with a bed, so keep the shelters ahead of your head count. There are eight shelter plots in all, opening at Headquarters 1, 2, 7, 14 and 19.
Building crews and timers
Each build or upgrade takes a crew. You have one crew to start and a second at Headquarters 4. Starting a build costs timber, steel and 5 energy.
Early levels take seconds. From about level 7 the timers get real: roughly 20 minutes at level 7, an hour and a half at level 8, ten hours at level 10 and more than a day in the high teens. The Headquarters takes half as long again as most buildings; the Woodpile and shelters are quicker.
Ways to finish sooner:
- Free finish: anything with five minutes or less to go can be finished free. Check your crews before you leave.
- Speed-up tokens: 5, 15, 30 and 60-minute tokens from goals, chests, missions and the Road.
- Scrap Metal: 3 for every minute left.
- Watch an ad (optional): takes a quarter of what's left, or 15 minutes if that's more. Up to five ads a day across the whole game, and only if you choose to.
More on these in Materials and Scrap Metal.
Collecting
The Woodpile and Scrap Heap make timber and steel every hour, even while you're away, and hold eight hours of output. After that they stop. The Veg Patches, Rain Barrels and Bullet Farm make food, water and ammo the same way, but those go into stores with a limit; anything over the limit when you collect spoils. One Collect button gathers it all.
A good habit: collect, check both crews are busy, then go and play a night. If you play twice a day, about eight hours apart, nothing goes to waste.