This can also be found here
I have seen a lot of threads on the forums about people whining about griefers and people with C4 coming in and blowing up their houses. The key when building a house/base is to consider your surroundings and the overall layout of your intended base. For example, having your Storage room as your front room is a terrible idea given it will take a small amount of C4 to blow up your door and take your loot. I learned this the hard way.
The Beginning:
If you’re like me, you build a wooden room as soon as you can since it’s more secure than a shelter when you’re starting. Remember shelters can be struck down – actual wooden buildings can only be destroyed by C4, excluding pillars and foundations at the moment. However, the problem with this is that raiders can still see through the cracks and assess what you have to offer. During the beginning phase of my base, I usually set barricades against the walls in order to better hide my boxes, however the most important aspect of this is that at first glance a raider might think the room is empty and move along…And you want this at this stage.
Building Phase:
This is perhaps the second time most vulnerable your base will be unless you have all the materials ready to go. What you want to do at this point is to avoid over complicating a base by making a second floor; you should focus on securing your storage/crafting room as well as discouraging raids on your house. A great way to do this is to build a “shell” around this room, essentially shielding it from a 1 tiered attack. The following is a simple example of how the first tier of your house might look like to make it less likely to get raided. The brown lines represent doorways with doors (your choosing), the brown squares doors and the black lines walls. Why not put the door in front of your crafting room? It’s simple: you want to add as many layers of barriers you can between that room and the main door.
example (image found on website)
End phase:
Once you have that “shell” around your important rooms, you want to keep loot in separate rooms as much as possible and logically reasonable. What on Earth does that mean? Don’t make the terrible mistake of having all your weapons/armor/crafting mats in the same 3 big boxes in your middle room. What you want to have at the end of your construction is a bedroom with an armory and several beds. Why? Because you want to have several spawn points and the option to gear yourself up immediately in case your house main entrance has been compromised. This particular arrangement has saved my house countless times. 3 raiders blow my first door, I die defending the second layer. I respawn, equip a second set of kevlar and a shotgun and I go back and kill another one of them. At the end, the third raider will be discouraged to keep going or die since you can keep going geared up. Also, it helps tremendously if you have “dummy” rooms and more walls “shelling” around the important ones – The point here is to make it as expensive as possible for your base to get raided, thus discouraging it.
Avoid Griefing:
Ever log in and notice a new set of stairs that wasn’t there when you logged out? Yeah. That happens. Once you are established, you should be able to secure enough resources to build an anti-griefing wall around your property. What on earth is that? Basically foundations with too many pillars – Raiders/Griefers won’t be able to build a set of stars/wall to close you in. Also, it helps if you plan your house accordingly and build it around an area that doesn’t allow the placing of foundations around it.