Scavenging and protected entry

Plan the search

Search cupboards and wardrobes for different goods rather than treating every container as a generic chest. Building, room and furniture kind route the loot. Generated furniture uses a search/loot ledger; reopening it is not another free roll. A newly player-placed piece opens empty without the initial scavenging delay.

Kitchen cabinets route to grocery supplies, wardrobes to residential goods, tool chests to hardware and medical cabinets to medical goods. These routes are categories, not guaranteed individual drops. Wider shelves/tall lockers share one inventory and break as one unit. Loot reference preserves the index’s limits.

Open a door

With the matching key anywhere in inventory, use unlocks/opens. Sneak-use unlocks a locked door or closes/locks an unlocked one from either side. Claim USE permission still applies.

Ordinary wooden house/shop doors can use an inside thumb-turn when one side is a roofed enclosed room and the other is outside. If both sides are enclosed, that distinction is lost. Security/vault doors, cells and shutters keep their security rules.

Lockpicking takes five real seconds per lock tier and Mechanics affects success; vaults cannot be picked. A pry bar opens a wooden fitting door in eight seconds, making noise and ruining the lock. The older guide’s “every door can be forced” has a later exception: security/vault entry needs the required heavy/powered tool and supply checks.

Match demolition tools to materials

Industrial tools draw from a nearby network. A generic grade is not proof a tool damages every structural material. Structural repair restores 25% with matching material; recovery chance depends on material. Ordinary vanilla glass remains breakable and noisy.

Secure the return route

Barricading a door/window uses a claw hammer and boards in four real seconds. Infected attack doors and barricades; bruisers can smash timber and climbers can clear supported two-block obstacles. Claims do not protect a room from infected. Keep a route back to treatment and rest.