Do I need to lock my gates?

[benjaminy]

Hi,

I've built a wall around my base to defend my valuables. Do I have to place a lock on all of my gates or are they already sealed against intruders who try to commit a crime?

Thanks in advance!

[FatnessV6]

If you dont lock them,thieves can just come up and open the gate and continue with business.

[benjaminy]

If you dont lock them,thieves can just come up and open the gate and continue with business.

Thanks for the quick reply!

[RainbowMoostache]

You mightaswell not have a wall in the first place if your gate is left without a lock. It'll just give the thieves an easier time to loot. So, yes, it is important.

Make sure not to forget to close any gates before you logout aswell, that's pretty important too.

[strawman]

It is pretty rough for a new player to get a lock. It seems kind of odd I can build makeshift fence very early, and now I can build the wooden fence but still cant build locks. I don't think I will be able to build locks until well after I can build stone walls, so for a good part of my character's life I cannot secure my base.

I feel like there should be different levels of locks so that early fences can use some rudimentary locks while higher tier gates require more advanced locks. As it is know, who would even bother locking a makeshift fence or wooden fence? By that time you have a more valuable base you are not going to be using those wall types anymore.

[jakhollin]

I would just focus on getting prospecting, metallurgy, and mining. The truth is if you don't have a forge near your base or a mine people will naturally assume your doors do not have locks and if it were me I would also assume you do not have anything I am interested in. Once you get a forge going you should be good to go from there and it is not that hard to make the push to get that.

The materials are probably the hardest to obtain however I noticed a stall selling nails for 12 silver and iron for 100 silver. So in all you really only need to work up 324 silver to get it built.

[Trismegistus]

It is pretty rough for a new player to get a lock. It seems kind of odd I can build makeshift fence very early, and now I can build the wooden fence but still cant build locks. I don't think I will be able to build locks until well after I can build stone walls, so for a good part of my character's life I cannot secure my base.

Correct. During the time you don't have locks yet, your base is also not very attractive to a serious criminal. Still, it is just a roll of the dice as to whether a thief either sees your base, thinks it's worth debuff to check, worth scents to steal the only 7 inspirational you have, all the other factors. I don't know what my dice rolled on all these, but I didn't have locks for what I think was a long time. I didn't build locks on my gates until I got Plank and put up a 35x35 wall. I even had three sheds before I put up that particular fence.

However what I did have was 30-40 TPs and my splitrail wasn't a square. I did this to make the "non-waste" trespass trip longer.

Walls:
| -------------------------------
|-------------------------------------- |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x ga | x |
| x te | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x | | x |
| x ----------------------------------- x |
--------------------------------------------|

EDIT: code hates my noob design but point is it's like a spiral right-to-left with the opening at the top and you have to walk between two walls all the way to the left side unless you "waste" my walls.