Unturned base building: claim flag, bed and horde beacon

The three placeables every base needs, with the rules the game actually runs: how far a claim flag reaches and what still gets through it, when a bed respawns you, and what a horde beacon spawns and pays out on every map. Read from the game files and code of Unturned 3.26.3.14. For how many explosives break your walls, see the raid calculator.

• Claim flag
• Beds 15
• Horde beacon
• Beacons by map 23
• Server settings

How big is a claim flag in Unturned?

A claim flag protects 32 metres in every direction from the flag, up and down too. Inside that, only the player who placed it and their group can build. Another player's claim flag can't go within 64 m of it.

How do you craft a claim flag?

2 × Wire, 2 × Cloth, 1 × Glue and 1 × Chemicals (with a Blowtorch, Crafting 3). It is a utility recipe.

How do you set your spawn with a bed in Unturned?

Place a cot or bedroll and press interact on it to claim it. After you die, "Respawn at bed" unlocks after 30 seconds (a random spawn after 10). You can own one bed at a time: claiming another releases the first.

What does a horde beacon do in Unturned?

It calls a wave of 100 zombies to the area you place it in; the last one is a mega zombie. Kill them all and it drops 7 items for one player (10 for two, 14 for four), mostly high-end guns and ammo.

How do you craft a horde beacon?

6 × Metal Sheet, 6 × Metal Bar, 2 × Raw Explosives, 2 × Chemicals and 1 × Detonator (with a Blowtorch, Crafting 3).

Claim flag

• What it blocks. Inside 32 m of the flag, a player who isn't its owner or in the owner's group can't place any barricade or structure: no floors, walls or ladders to climb into your base, and no sentries or beds of their own next to it.
• It's a sphere. The game measures straight-line distance from the flag, so height counts. A flag on the ground floor of a tall base doesn't reach the roof 32 m up. Put it near the middle of what you want covered.
• Flags can't overlap other players' claims. A new claim flag needs 64 m from any flag that isn't yours or your group's. Your own and your group's flags can sit anywhere, so you can chain them to cover a large base.
• What still gets through. The claim stops building, nothing else: raiders can still shoot, break and open what isn't locked. Bounce Charge, Demolition Charge and Precision Charge ignore claims and can be placed anywhere, which is how raiders stick charges to your walls.
• On a vehicle. A claim flag placed on a vehicle claims the whole vehicle instead of a radius: only you and your group can build on it.
• Singleplayer. Claims do nothing there; you own everything on your own server.
• Breaking it. It's explosion-proof: charges, grenades and rockets do nothing to it. Guns and melee weapons do: 1 shot with a Sawed-Off, 1 shot with a Masterkey, 1 shot with a Quadbarrel and 2 hits with a Fire Axe. That's why players hide the flag inside walls or behind a locked door. More tools: raid calculator for the claim flag.

Beds

Every bed in the game. They all work the same: what differs is the health and the recipe. The plain one is crafted, the colours are dyed from it.

• Claim it. Placing a bed doesn't set your spawn. Press interact on it to claim it, and again to release it. A claimed bed is yours alone: nobody else can claim or release it.
• One bed per player. Claiming a bed releases any other bed you own.
• Respawning. After you die, "Respawn at bed" unlocks after 30 seconds and a random respawn after 10 (the server's Timer_Home andTimer_Respawn).
• When it fails. You get a random spawn instead if the bed is gone, if anything blocks a 2.5 m tall space on top of it, or if it sits in a no-building zone.
• Where you can't place one. Arena maps, kill zones, safe zones (unless the server allows building there), and most vehicles (unless Bypass_Buildable_Mobility is on). A claim flag also stops other players from putting a bed inside your base.
• Decay. Like every barricade, a bed is no longer saved once its owner and their group haven't played for 7 days (Decay_Time).
• Bedroll or cot? A cot has 350 health, a bedroll 50. A cot takes 1 charge with a Precision Charge, 2 shots with a Sawed-Off and 14 hits (10 heavy) with a Fire Axe; a bedroll 1 charge with a Precision Charge, 1 shot with a Sawed-Off and 2 hits with a Fire Axe. Hide the bed inside the base, since anyone who breaks it sends you back to a random spawn.

Horde beacon

1. Place it where zombies spawn. It has to sit inside the zombie navigation area of a town or base, and not on a vehicle. Some curated maps allow it only in certain areas: see beacons by map.
2. The wave. The area spawns 100 zombies in all, counting the ones already alive there. Dead ones respawn at once (Respawn_Beacon_Time is 0 s) until the count is reached. The last zombie to spawn is a mega zombie.
3. They're tougher. During a beacon, every hit on a zombie is divided by 1.5 for each player who was in the area when you placed it, so they take 1.5× the usual damage to kill solo, 3× with two and 6× with four.
4. Stay in the area. If no living player is left in the area, the beacon breaks itself and drops nothing. It also drops nothing if it's destroyed before the last zombie dies.
5. The payout. When the last zombie dies, the beacon breaks and drops its items on the spot. Each drop is rolled separately from the reward table below. Zombie kills give their normal XP times Beacon_Experience_Multiplier (no full-moon bonus).

How many items it drops

The drop count grows with the square root of the players in the area when it was placed: Rewards × √players, rounded up, then the server's multiplier and caps. Zombie toughness grows faster, so a big group gets fewer items each.

What it drops

The base-game beacon rolls its 24-item reward table for each drop: high-end guns, their magazines, ammo boxes and grenades. "Expected solo" is how many of each a one-player beacon gives on average.

Horde beacons by map

Where a beacon works on each map and how big the wave is. "Zombie areas" are the map's navigation areas that spawn zombies; a map's zombie settings can forbid beacons in some of them. On A6 Polaris, Arid, Buak, California (Original), California 2, Elver and Kuwait a beacon works only in some areas. Several curated maps ship their own beacons with their own wave size and loot, and some of them turn off the base-game recipes, so there the map's beacon is the one you can craft.

Curated maps' own beacons

Each one's wave, drops and the top of its reward table. Items marked * come with the map and have no page here; the map's item list has their IDs.

Maps that change these rules

• Arid: respawn at bed after 20 s, barricades decay after 5 days and structures decay after 5 days.
• California (Original): barricades decay after 3.5 days and structures decay after 3.5 days.
• California 2: respawn at bed after 20 s.
• Dango: instant respawn at bed and instant random respawn.
• Easter Island: respawn at bed after 20 s, barricades decay after 3.5 days and structures decay after 3.5 days.
• Elver: barricades decay after 3.5 days, structures decay after 3.5 days and beacon XP × 2.
• Limestone: barricades decay after 5 days and structures decay after 5 days.
• Rio de Janeiro: barricades decay after 5 days and structures decay after 5 days.

Server settings

The Config.txt settings that change beds, building and horde beacons, with the defaults a fresh server writes.

Read from the game files of Unturned 3.26.3.14: item stats, recipes, reward tables and each map's zombie areas from the asset files, the rules (claim radius, bed respawn, beacon waves and drops) from the game's code. The page rebuilds itself when the game updates.