Resources such as pine logs, stone, and the like are used to craft weapons, clothes, and upgrades to your home base when you play Days After: Survival Games. Some resources such as food, water, and medicinal equipment can also be consumed to relieve your character’s hunger, refill their depleted health, or get rid of the infection. 

To put it simply, resources is a blanket term for all sorts of items that you need to survive in the world of Days After: Survival Games. Generally, they can be obtained by salvaging the explorable areas, trading with other survivors, or buying them with real money from the in-game store. This guide focuses exactly on where and how to collect resources for your survival – without having to spend real money. 

Harvesting Resources

Resources in Days After: Survival Games can either be manually obtained by collecting them from nature, looting abandoned backpacks or crates, or be crafted with other resources and specific equipment. They can be categorized according to where and how they can be obtained.

  1. Natural resources – these are natural materials that can be manually obtained either by hand or by using tools. Examples of these are pine log (wood), stone, grass, clay, and scrap metal.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • Pine log, grass, and stone can be obtained by hand given that you obtain them from small logs and stones scattered around the map

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • Otherwise, you can get pine log and stone from trees and big rocks respectively. You will need to craft an axe to cut down trees and you will need a sledgehammer to smash rocks into stone. The axe and sledgehammer must be taken with you during the expedition, meaning that two inventory slots must be reserved for them.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • Piles of metal clutter and clay rocks can also be smashed with a sledgehammer to collect scrap metal and clay respectively.
  • Always keep in mind that tools have limited durability so make sure to pack an extra axe and sledgehammer if you are planning to loot for a lengthy amount of time. 
    • Additionally, an inventory slot can only carry maximum 20 pieces of the same item so manage your inventory properly.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

2. Craftable resources – these are resources that can be crafted given that you have the resources required to do so. An example of this is the wooden plank.

  • For some of these resources, you will need to craft special furniture. Crafting wooden planks requires the Workbench (can be crafted once you reach Level 10).
  • Note that craftable resources can also be obtained from looting. It is just easier to craft them instead of collecting them from loot.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  1. Loot Crafted– these are resources that cannot be manually harvested from nature nor be crafted.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • They can only be obtained from lootable objects such as backpacks, containers, and even hidden crates that can be found in a specific area of a location. Loot are usually small items such as nails, rivets, microchips, steel scrap, and other small items.

Exploring the Outside

The map of Days After: Survival Games contains plenty of explorable areas that contain resources and useful loot. You can access the map and begin exploring the world by going outside of your home base’s boundaries. The boundary is indicated a green line with “exit” written all over it.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

There are multiple explorable locations in Days After: Survival Games. Not all can be explored immediately as some locations require you to upgrade your home base’s Observation Tower or have a car (a car can be repaired in your home base). 

Once your Observation Tower reaches Level 2, you will unlock max-difficulty bases where you can get extremely valuable loot at the expense of facing very difficult enemies. Within these levels, you can further increase the difficulty (green, yellow, red).

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

Each location has important information that you must consider:

  • Difficulty – denoted by skulls; the more skulls there are, the harder that area is to explore; meaning powerful zombies reside in them
  • Enemies – tells you the type of enemies that you will encounter; enemies are not just zombies, but they can also be wild animals like wolves and boars
  • Possible loot – tells you the possible items that you can obtain from that area
  • Best loot – tells you the best possible loot that you can obtain

These explorable areas refresh their available resources and loot every 3 hours. This means that if you cut all the trees in one area, all of them will respawn after the 3-hour period. The possible loot and best loot may also change after this period.

Travelling to a location can be done either by running or walking to it. Running will take only several real-world seconds at the expense of endurance; whereas walking can take as long as several minutes, but no endurance is spent. Generally, always run to a location unless you have used up all your endurance. Just ensure to make every trip count.

What to Do Before and During Exploration

Now that you know how exploration works in Days After: Survival Games. Here are some things that you must take note of to maximize your exploration.

  • Before the trip

    • Ensure that you have enough space in your inventory. Bring an axe, sledgehammer, an extra weapon, and food. Bring an extra axe and sledgehammer if you are planning to loot more than one area.
    • Take note of the materials that you need to obtain
  • By knowing the items that you need, it can help you in choosing the best location to explore and loot.
  • The location named “An Accident on the Bridge” is arguably one of the best locations in Days After: Survival Games as it is filled with abandoned vehicles whose trunks contain plenty of loot. Consider exploring this location first.
  • Ensure that you have enough endurance points. It takes three minutes to refill one endurance point.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • During the exploration

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • Avoid fighting zombies and wild animals – if a horde of enemies starts chasing you, get out of that area and reenter it, this will reset all enemies to their default spawns. You can try to avoid enemies by sneaking around them. Backpacks and containers however tend to be guarded by a group of zombies so you will need to be prepared to fight them.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

  • When you run out of food, pick up berries and/or pumpkins when you see them and immediately consume them. If they run out and you are still low on health, leave the area and run back home.
  • Only obtain the materials that you need – you do not need to loot everything unless you are certain that it is a rare item.
  • Puppies may spawn while you are exploring and will constantly follow you. You can pick them up and take them back home to take care of them (dogs give you bonuses). Taking a puppy takes up one inventory slot so make sure that you do not accidentally pick them up if you don’t intend to take a puppy home.

Resource Gathering and Management Guide - Days After: Survival Games

Days After: Survival Games has an auto-collect feature where you will automatically obtain the nearest resources constantly. Be wise in using this feature as it may lead you to a horde of zombies.