The Horde at Home survival guide breaks down the core day-and-night loop that keeps your family alive on Deer Run Lane. Every day is a race to prepare before sundown; every night is a test of how well you spent those daylight hours. Master the rhythm below and you will hold the house far deeper into the fifty-night campaign.
Daylight: Prepare the Homestead
Start each morning by drawing water from the well and tending the crops and animals — a tended farm doubles your hourly points yield. Repair and reinforce the backyard fence so a breach does not scatter your livestock, then upgrade crops and buy more animals as your points allow. Visit Grandpa in the shed to craft ammunition and climb the ten-tier weapon ladder; early tiers are affordable, but the heaviest guns become stretch goals around day ten. Talk to Grandpa once a day for a free bandage and a piece of hard-won advice, and pet Rex for a small morale boost. Fortify each window's barricade and install or refill auto-turrets on the windows you expect to see the most pressure.
Nightfall: Defend the Windows
When the horde approaches, tap any window to drop into the first-person aim view. Keep shutters closed when you are not firing to halve incoming damage, and open them only to take your shot. Aim for the head — headshots kill instantly — and shoot legs to slow approaching zombies, or arms to reduce their attack damage. Your AI-controlled family members auto-fire at the zombies in their own lanes, so manage ammo across all four windows rather than tunnel-visioning one. Deploy land mines at the fence line, send Rex to hold a pressured lane, and let yard turrets thin the horde before it reaches the house.
Economy and Difficulty Scaling
Horde at Home uses a single points currency for every upgrade — weapons, turrets, fortifications, livestock, and cosmetic gear all draw from the same pool, so every purchase is a tradeoff. Difficulty scales steeply across the campaign: walkers dominate the early nights, joggers add speed around day four, brutes arrive with heavy armor, and towering mutants appear late and can shrug off a full magazine. Pace your weapon and turret upgrades to outpace that curve, keep the farm producing, and never let the fence sit broken overnight. Survive all fifty nights and the homestead stands for good.