Window Barricade Priority
In the first week you will never have enough planks and nails to seal every opening in a house, so barricading is a triage problem, not a checklist. The goal is to spend your limited materials on the windows that actually decide whether a horde gets in, while leaving the ones zombies cannot reach or do not care about. Work the list in priority order and you will be safe long before you are "finished".
The priority order
- Ground-floor windows facing a street. Most zombie traffic and the most ways a wandering corpse can spot you inside. Always go to the full 4 planks here.
- Ground-floor windows facing your kill funnel.2 planks is enough — the funnel is where you'll be standing anyway, so you can react before anything climbs through.
- Ground-floor windows on a back wall. 2 planks plus a closed curtain. Low traffic, but still reachable.
- Second-floor and above.Skip the barricade — zombies can't climb. Hang a sheet rope on one instead.
Why line-of-sight comes first
A zombie that cannot see or hear you mostly will not commit to your building. An un-barricaded window with the curtains open is a clear line of sight straight to wherever you are standing, and a zombie that spots you through it will path to that window and start climbing. That is why a street-facing window is the top priority: it has both the most passing traffic and the longest sight lines to the road. Barricading it breaks the line of sight entirely, and a planked window also takes longer for a zombie to clamber through even if one does target it.
Plank barricades vs. metal bars
A plank barricade takes up to 4 planks and 4 nails per window, and each plank adds durability — 1 plank is flimsy, 4 is a serious obstacle. Planks are cheap and you can disassemble doors and furniture for more, so they are your bread and butter early. Metal bar barricades are the upgrade: they require a propane torch, welder mask, and metal bars or sheets, and they hugely outlast wood while still letting you see and fire through the gaps. Save metal for the handful of windows on the most exposed face once you have a welding kit. A nailed metal sheet is the most durable option but blocks the window completely and is overkill for most openings.
Keep one window as an escape — sheet ropes
Never seal yourself in with no way out. Leave at least one upper-floor window with a sheet rope (1 sheet plus a nail, or a proper rope) so you have a bug-out exit if the ground floor is breached. Because zombies cannot use sheet ropes or climb up them, this is a one-way valve in your favor: you can drop out, but nothing comes up. Many players make a sheet-roped second-floor window their main entrance and leave the ground floor entirely walled, turning the whole base into a vertical fortress.
Curtains, sledgehammered windows, and edge cases
Curtains are free stealth: a closed curtain blocks line of sight even on a window you have not yet barricaded, so put curtains up everywhere on day one. If you sledgehammer a window frame out completely, the opening becomes a doorway-style gap that zombies can walk straight through without climbing — never do that to an exterior wall you mean to defend. One more edge case: a barricade has two sides, and you can only remove the planks from the side you placed them on, so barricade from inside if you ever want to take it down again. Finally, broken-glass windows still function for climbing and line-of-sight, so treat them exactly like intact ones when you prioritize.
Open the planner, turn the Threats overlay on, and any window the planner flags red is at the top of the queue.