First 4 horde nights were spent on top of a MD Melt Downs billboard. built a platform off the front with a scaffold ladder melee window. Zombies followed stairs up to a 5 block long 0.05 center-side pole "tightrope" approach to the otherside of the scaffold ladder melee window. This limited the number of attacking zombies to 1 at a time and the height was sufficient that zombies didn't go into destroy everything mode if they fell or were knocked off the tightrope approach. I hacked thru as many as I could each horde night as they ran the climb stairs, walk tightrope, get knocked off circuit. All this was only in cobblestone. Once I acquired concrete, built a dedicated horde base in the wasteland (maximize loot stage for horde night) following similar paradigm but without the billboard. Elevated tower (5x5x15 high) with scaffold ladder melee window with 30 block long tightrope style approach. Started out with machete, then switched to sniper rifles, ap ammo, and penetrator perk to kill multiple Z's with single shot. Lining the tightrope with barbed wire slows the approaching zombies and I manage 700 kills each horde night with around 500-600 ap bullets and end up with mid-30's number of loot bags. Eventually converted the tightrope to steel as one horde night the concrete one was destroyed by a second demolisher oopsie in same place. Otherwise everything is just concrete.
As far as home goes, I played nomad for first 5 weeks, building storage boxes in front of which ever trader I was currently dealing with. Hunker down at night high up in some cleared POI until I acquired nightvision goggles. Though running around at night wasn't all that difficult with a stealth build. Just throw rocks to distract any zombies that got too close. I set up a couple of forges, workbench, and a cement mixer out in an open field in front of Rekt in the initial forrest biome. I wouldn't spend much time there, only to load up and empty the workstations. Eventually, used a claim block to move them to the wasteland where I built an actual home base out of concrete and bulletproof glass with farming and dew collectors on the roof. The first floor has a drive-thru garage with 5x3 powered doors where I park my vehicles when not in use. Once the wasteland becomes manageable, I feel there's little need to return to the other biomes. So I put off building a home until settling in the wasteland. Besides, Joel is so much more friendly.