Safehouses on ZA-Z: claiming, members, trespass and the 14-day rule
A safehouse on ZA-Z is a map building you claim with a right-click. Once it is yours, nobody outside your group can walk in or drive in, nobody else can take anything from it, fire cannot damage it, and you can respawn there after you die. Each player gets one (owning it or being a member both count), player-built structures can never be claimed, and a safehouse that nobody from it visits for 14 real days (336 hours) disappears.
#How do I claim a safehouse?
- Pick a building that is part of the map. On ZA-Z any map building will do: shops, offices and warehouses as well as houses.
- Clear it. No zombie and no other player may be inside the building or within 2 tiles of it.
- Stand inside, indoors, right-click and choose Claim Safehouse.
Your zone is the building's footprint plus a 2-tile border all round. That border is protected too; anything past it is not.
#Why was my claim refused?
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Must be inside a building to claim it. | Step indoors, onto a roofed floor. |
| Occupied building. Cannot be claimed until empty. | Something is still inside or within 2 tiles: hunt down the last zombie, or ask the other player to step out. |
| Safehouse intersects with another. | Another zone is too close. Zones, border included, cannot overlap. |
| Spawn location. Cannot be claimed. | New survivors start in this building, so it stays open to everyone. |
| You are already a member or owner of a safehouse | One per player. Quit your current one first. |
Some buildings the server keeps open for everyone, like the Tattoos and the Tattoo Parlour, cannot be claimed either.
#Can I claim a base I built myself?
No. The claim only works on buildings that are part of the map, so a cabin you raised from scratch never qualifies. If you want your own walls protected, build them inside the zone of a claimed map building: the building plus its 2-tile border.
#Adding members
Right-click inside your safehouse and pick View Safehouse to open its panel. From there the owner can:
- Add Player: the player gets an invitation to accept. Someone who already belongs to another safehouse cannot be added.
- Remove a player, rename the safehouse, hand it to a new owner with Change Owner, or Release Safehouse to give it up.
A member can leave with Quit Safehouse. Members get everything the owner gets: they walk in freely, open doors, use and loot every container, build, swing a sledgehammer inside, and can respawn there. Members and faction mates also show up on each other's world map; nobody else does.
#What are the trespass rules?
#On foot
A non-member cannot step into your zone. Anyone who ends up inside anyway (a teleport, a relog, a gap in the timing) is picked up within about 20 seconds and set down just outside the zone's north-west corner, woken up first if they were asleep. Server staff can enter any zone.
#In vehicles
Build 42 on its own checks trespass on foot only, so a car could drive straight into a safehouse and park there. ZA-Z closes that gap. Every in-game minute (7.5 real seconds) the server checks everyone sitting in a vehicle, and a non-member inside a zone is thrown out of the seat and then moved outside like any walker. The vehicle stays where it stopped. This covers passengers too: a non-member riding in a member's car is ejected all the same. Members riding in any car are left alone.
#No looting, no fire
Non-members cannot take items from a safehouse or interact with its objects; the game answers "You do not have permission to interact with objects in this safehouse." Fire cannot damage a safehouse, so nobody can burn you out with a Molotov.
#No loot respawn inside
Containers in a safehouse never refill in the server's loot respawn wave. What you store is what you have. See Loot.
#Respawning in your safehouse
Open the safehouse panel and tick Respawn in Safehouse. When you die, your next survivor starts inside the safehouse instead of at a spawn town. Every member sets this for themselves.
#Sledgehammers only work in your safehouse
On ZA-Z you can only knock down walls, doors and other world objects with a sledgehammer inside a safehouse you belong to. Outside a zone the sledgehammer does nothing, which keeps the map (and other people's bases) in one piece. Want to remodel? Claim the building first.
#How long does a safehouse last?
A safehouse expires when 336 real hours (14 days) pass without the owner or any member standing inside the zone. Only being there counts: logging in somewhere else does not reset the clock, but a quick visit from any one member resets it for everyone. The countdown is real time, so it keeps running while you are offline and while the server is empty.
When it runs out, the claim disappears without a message. Your walls and your stash stay where they are, but the protection is gone, and anyone can walk in and help themselves. The faction survives, since factions never expire.
Your survivor page at zazomboid.com/me shows your safehouse's expiry countdown, and its Safehouse tab lists what the place holds: guns, ammo by calibre, skill books, magazines, tapes, food freshness and generators. The list updates every couple of hours and only you can see it; the public switch on that page shares nothing but your safehouse's town and expiry, never where it is.
#Factions
Factions are the game's own: create one, invite players, and give it a tag. On ZA-Z:
- Faction mates cannot shoot each other, and can only hit each other in melee when one of them turns on faction PvP.
- Faction mates and safehouse members appear on each other's world map. Nobody else shows on it.
- A faction has no expiry, so it outlives a lost safehouse.
- Factions have their own tab on the leaderboard.
For the rest of the PvP rules and every other server option, see Server settings. New to the server? Start with Getting started.