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"Definition of looting; anything taken by dishonesty, force, stealth, etc."

Looting (also known as scavenging) is an essential part of the gameplay in Dead Frontier. Typically, "looting" is used to describe the action of searching for items in the Inner City. While looting in today's society is considered as theft of goods, it is a part of life in Dead Frontier, since this is how survivors get items to prolong their survival.

Survivors are very dependent on looting, as that is the main way in which new items are brought into the game. Many of the items in the game can only be obtained by looting in the Inner City. Cash, Weapons, Ammunition, Clothing, Armour, Food, Medication, Miscellaneous Items and Barricading materials, are all of the things that players can find. Items found in the inner city can be either utilized by the player, sold at the Market, or scrapped in the Yard for quick cash.

Note: Non-GMs can only loot Non-LE Weapons of level 110 or below, and any Non-LE Armours of level 45 Repair or below.

On October 15th, 2016 looting was changed to consider the players level. If a player is looting in a zone that contains items for higher levels than they are, they will now only get items for their level. Ex: A level 20 looting near Secronom Bunker will get baked beans and bandages, rather than Nerotonin 8B and whiskey. This loot restriction no longer applies after level 45, or if the account has Gold Membership.

What's the difference between a GM and a Non-GM?[]

At level 45, Non-GMs can:

  • Loot any Non-LE Weapon of level 110 Proficiency or below
  • Loot any Non-LE Armour of level 45 Repair or below
  • Loot Experimental Parts from Bandits
  • Loot any Dawn or X-Weapon/X-Armour blueprint or component (Black zone and onwards)
  • Loot Death Row weapon blueprints in Death Row

(it is unknown if Non-GMs need to be a certain level to loot Experimental parts or blueprints, but they are able to loot them)

Starting from level 1, GMs can (in addition to the above):

  • Find 60% extra loot spots
  • Find twice as much armour, weapons, cash amount and ammo amount
  • Loot any Non-LE Weapon
  • Loot any Non-LE Armour
  • Loot Tier 1 Implants
  • Loot Tier 2 Implants in Wastelands or Death Row
  • Loot Preassembled Death Row weapons in Death Row

Basics of Looting[]

Looting follows a 3-step procedure, as shown below:

  1. Get next to or on top of a loot spot, which will have a yellow highlight plus a "?" mark on top of it. Loot spots' yellow highlight will also appear on the minimap, but will not fade away after the spots have been looted.
    • Boss loot are highlighted as orange dots on the minimap.
  2. Initiate the process by holding E (or F). This process takes 3 seconds at 0% Search Speed (the default).
    • Player can perform any other action while looting, including moving (as long as the player does not leave the loot spot), firing and reloading weapons
    • Releasing loot button or leaving the spot cause progress to regress at the same rate.
  3. After the wait period, there are 2 possibilities:
    • Found no item: The object becomes un-lootable.
    • Found item: A dialog will then appear, asking if the player wants to take the item. Player enters AFK mode in the meantime, rendering the player completely invulnerable.
      • Player can click Yes (default E) to put the item into their inventory, No (default T) to reject the item, Consume (default C) to immediately use the item in case of food/medicine, or Inventory (default I). Looted items are immediately usable in the Inventory screen.
      • There is also a counter at the bottom of the dialog, showing how many remaining inventory slots are available.
      • If the player's inventory is full, a different dialog will appear. The player can only click OK or Consume to close, or Inventory if they wish to free space for the item.

Important Notes[]

  • The chances of you finding a weapon or armor on the same block of an outpost (buildings included) are severely reduced. In addition, players cannot find Craftable Weapons' parts inside those block.
  • Aside from the situation above, there is no such thing as a loot penalty based on player behavior. You are not penalized for re-entering an area or building after exiting it, barricading and looting in the same area, or looting in the same area after resetting client.
  • Once you search an object past 75% the loot rolling process begins, and any previously looted spot will disappear.
    • Take special note of this when looting boss drops, as even if you don't see the loot, if you have gotten it past 75% it will count as "looted" and will disappear when looting another corpse.
  • If you reject an item you found, the object you searched will still be lootable, containing the same item you left behind until the above condition is met.

Loot Drop Mechanics[]

  1. When you loot a normal loot spot:
    • 75% chance to get a loot offer.
    • 25% chance to find nothing and shows one of the following messages:
      • "Useless junk." / "Broken beyond repair." / "Nothing I can use." / "Didn't find anything."
  2. When you get a loot offer, game then attempts to roll for valuable items:
    • Tiny (unknown) chance of getting blueprints, weapon parts, and implants.
    • Small chance of getting a Weapon or Armour:
      • Each region has a base chance, which represents the overall likelihood of getting a weapon or armour (see Loot Data section)
      • Weapon chance is 0.8 * base, Armor chance is 0.2 * base.
        • If the weapon roll succeeds, do another roll to see if weapon is a Melee / Chainsaw (66.67% chance); weapon will be a firearm if this fails.
      • Weapon / Armour chances are raised separately by Weapon / Armour Loot Chance boosts.
        • Ex: For SEZ, base loot chance is 5%, so weapon chance is 0.8 * 5% = 4%, while armour chance is 0.2 * 5% = 1%
  3. If you failed to get a valuable item, game rolls for miscellaneous items:
    • 5% chance of barricade material
    • 25% chance of cash
    • ~1% chance of clothing
  4. If you failed all the other checks, the game automatically gives you a consumable item:
    • This includes: Ammunition (55%), Food (22.5%), Medication (22.5%)
    • If you get an Ammunition offer:
      • Each zone has common ammo types and uncommon ammo types with 25% the offer chance compared to common ones.
      • All common ammo types have the same offer chance.
        • Ex: In the SEZ, there are 6 common ammo types and no uncommon ones. Thus the chance of each ammo is 1/6
      • Amount is dependent on ammo type: An average of 200 pistol, rifle, and shotgun rounds, 36 grenades, and 400ml of gasoline per offer.
      • South Eastern Zone grants x1.125 the amount of average ammo per pickup; this means 225 pistol, rifle, and shotgun rounds, 40 grenades, and 450ml of gasoline per offer.

Looting and Selling for newbies[]

When you are low level (between 1 to 5), you probably loot and collect whatever useful items you find and enough to sustain yourself. However when you achieve to higher levels, you should start selling whatever extra loot you have and most of the time, you will always have more than you need.

As you are out looting in the inner city, your inventory will begin to fill with the items you found. Soon, your inventory will be full. You can`t really go any further in your looting trip when your inventory is full so, it may be time for you to go back to the Outpost (Nastya's, Dogg's Stockade, Precinct 13, Fort Pastor or Secronom Bunker). If you have the items to barricade it is advised to barricade and make your own personal outpost. NOTE: make sure you have enough sets of planks and nails depending on the building you barricade.

Now when you are back at the Outpost, to sell your looting items, go to the "market" (or "Trading" if you're in a personal outpost) by clicking the Market. When you are in the market notice that you can buy, sell or private trade with someone. "So, how do I sell my items?" First, click the word "selling" on top of the small window.

Now, if you are not selling anything, your selling list will be empty, there will be a statement in red saying "You are not selling anything".

To sell an item from your "Backpack" located just under your selling list, drag the item to your selling list and release. Then a window will appear enabling you to state the price of an item you want to sell.

"Help ! I don`t know how much I should sell my stuff for." Well, if you are really unsure about how much something is worth to be sold, then you should check its market value. To check the market value of an item go to the "buying" section and type the name of the item on the search box and click search or "Enter". Wait for the window to load and after its done loading, you will see a long list of the things you were searching for. The item sold on the list always starts from the lowest price to the highest. Now, you should have an idea on how much you should sell your looted items for.

Be careful not to sell at unreasonably high prices as no one will buy them. The items you sold will remain in your list as long as they are not sold. Yes, you can cancel an item that you sold in your selling list by clicking "cancel" located at the right side of the list.

NOTE: Another way to consider your selling price is by checking its "scrap value" as some items are sold at about the same price and sometimes lower, but rarely. The scrap price of MC weapons and armour are 2 times its original scrap price.


When you're done putting your things on sale, your inventory should be about empty again which enables you to continue looting if you desire. If your items are bought by someone, the money is automatically transferred to your bank.

Problems faced when looting[]

Players cannot move too far away from the object that they are looting. If they do so, they will be unable to loot said object.

The largest hindrance faced when looting is the presence of zombies. Zombies are almost always in the way when the player is looting especially when you are in more dangerous zones like the white zone. For example, staying in a certain spot to search for items could cause the player to be surrounded. Also, players may find themselves with very little time to search an object before a zombie catches up and attacks them. NOTE: It is unadvised to use chainsaws or other aggro generating weapons while looting. Such weapons will attract zombies, making looting all that more difficult. Only silent weapons should be used during looting if one doesn't want to generate aggro. Silent weapons include melee and crossbows, while -semi-silent weapons

Another problem is if you run into a group of players grinding, attracting mass amounts of zombies. If you do not like any form of distraction while looting it's best to play in single player mode which can be turned on or off in the settings menu (Menu can be accessed by pressing either escape or F1).

If there is a connection issue, it may take a long time to loot an object, or the player may get no item every time they attempt to loot something. To fix this issue, refresh your page, and if that doesn't work, put yourself in Single player mode or troubleshoot your connection problem.

There are also some chances that some loot spot may spawn in an spot where you can't access (i.e body in the jail cell, kitchen sink at apartments, etc).

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