How to survive a raid in The Survivalists

The Orclings are not a friendly bunch. They have a wide aggression range and will see you and your monkeys from far away. If that wasn’t bad enough, the skeletons around the island and their dialogue heavily imply they kill stranded humans and wear their skins with pride. You will run into them now and then while exploring. Alone, they are not much of a threat. If you have a couple of well-armed monkeys with you, you will be fine. After encountering them, they will know of you and will eventually raid your base.

A raid on an unprepared base can be devastating. You will get stuck in a combat loop. If your bed gets destroyed, you will spawn at your original spawn location. You could lose all your items and progress. The game will give you just enough warning to prepare for combat, but not enough to build defenses. Here’s how to prepare and survive a raid.

Monkey army

Your strength is in numbers. When you get to the island, find as many monkey friends as you can. Have a small number dedicated to crafting and the majority ready for combat. Take them with you when you hunt to help level their combat skills. You want a lot of monkeys prepared for combat. Raids bring a lot of Orclings, and it is easy to get overwhelmed. You will have enough time to arm your monkeys, provided you have the equipment, and set them all to combat. You will not have time to make weapons, so always have some at the ready. And make sure you have a training dummy.

Placement

Be mindful of your base’s location. We placed our starter base on the beach. The Orclings do not appear to cross the water very well. We used walls to block the only entrance to the beach. It means we have to do more legwork to get anywhere on the island, but we’re safe.

Traps

Traps are unlocked after making wooden walls for the first time. The lowest tier traps are wooden. If you don’t have the supplies, they will do. The second tier is bone. Bones are easy to find and require less effort than wooden traps. The final trap tier is metal. It may not be feasible to have metal spike traps before your first raid. Worry not, bone traps one-shot enemies that walk on them anyway.

You can walk over your own traps without triggering them, so don’t worry if you have to put them in a doorway.

Walls

We set up a wall, followed by spike traps, and then another wall. The walls we chose are made of stone. Stone walls are strong and use common materials, but require the forge to complete. When starting out, wood walls may suffice. Straw walls are the last resort as they do not withstand damage.