Base suggestions

[Ursiak]

Hello  

First time posting here, only recently started playing the game. I'm enchanted with it and enjoy it a lot. 

I just finished building my first official base and it turned out waaaay bigger than I thought it would be. But because I'm not very experienced and a lot of mechanics are still a mystery to me, I need recommendation what I could put in it. 

What kind of rooms do you think a proper base should have? Other than the obvious kitchen, bedroom, storage and pantry. I was thinking about putting everything related to smelting and a mill in separate buildings, but that might change to avoid the base staying empty. 

Any experienced players can give me their advice? 

[Ryilo]

A separate building for smithing and mill, since both benefit from a windmill. In your 'main' house as you already mentioned you need just a kicthen, a cellar to keep food fresh, and a bed.

You can make a separate building exclusively for storage, then a small building for leathermaking and dyes/paper (near the windmill, you'll need to grind some things). 

You also need space for the animals, better to put them inside a building. And a farming area. 

I prefer different buildings, so I can make them bigger if needed, if I build a "base" with different rooms they end up being too small or too big...

Don't forget the space for the smelting of iron and for making steel, and for the furnaces to cook clay objects/bricks.

I'm surely forgetting something...

[Echo Weaver]

I'm in late game with my first playthrough, and there are a lot of things I'd do differently. The big thing being that EVERYTHING requires more space than I thought. 

I started out ok. I built a 3x5 dirt hovel near spawn. Then I built a one-story base with a kitchen in one corner, a smithing area in another, table and wall racks on the third, and stairs going down to a cellar in the forth.

The animal pens, which became a barn about 50% larger than my base.

At that point, I found a nicer location and wanted to build a new base. I also had a good supply of temporal gears and could change my spawn point. If you're playing with temporal gears to change spawn, it seems like you HAVE to build your first base near spawn. Unless you play with permadeath like some guy who doesn't need to be tagged into this thread. 

For my new base, I built out a cathedral ruin and extended the spire to a nice height for a windmill. The base was 3 storeys and easily 3x the space of my previous base. I think it looks pretty cool for an architecture-impaired person like myself. Then I built out a nearby ruin (I guess the whole area is a village ruin) into a barn and bisected it for sheep/pigs. 

Getting the livestock moved over was the HUGEST PAIN. This was in 1.19, but getting 3rd gen livestock to move with rope leads is still a lot of pain. Moving my inventory was also a pain, and doing it without Carry On would be worse.

Half of my base has gone to smithing and automation, with the manual smithing stuff on the ground floor and the second floor hooked up to the windmill power train. I had to go through a dozen drafts in creative to figure out how to cram all three automatable devices in there. And it needs 2 forges because running back and forth from downstairs when you're helve hammering is just silly. The barn is also too small now that I've bred out my livestock a bit. Expanding the existing barn would be weird because of its ruin foundation, so I'm probably going to build a separate barn for the sheep and devote the original one to pigs.

Worst, I've run out of places for storage containers convenient to the places that need them most.

Sooo.... I guess this overly long post is to muse on what could be done better.

1. It would be nice to not move your base mid-game, but considering respawn mechanics, I'm not sure how. Maybe just try to scope out a permanent location earlier and plan to move as soon as you get your first temporal gear. Since right now livestock pregnancies and aging don't progress unless you're close enough to the animals for the chunk to be loaded, it's not really practical to set up your initial barn far from where you plan to spend most of your time.

2. Once you're in midgame, it's hard to overestimate how much storage you'll need. Even with the large stack size for ore nuggets, I had to move from chests to crates pretty quickly for smithing. Imagine everything you're collecting in quantity will need its own crate eventually and build out your space accordingly.

3. It probably is better to make the windmill and forge its own building.

There may be more lessons learned. I'll think on it. 

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Ursiak said:

I was thinking about putting everything related to smelting and a mill in separate buildings, but that might change to avoid the base staying empty. 

Welcome to the forums! I will actually run counter to what others have already suggested on this, and say...it depends. Do you enjoy building and actually want to have them in separate buildings, or do you prefer having everything conveniently in one general location? What my friend and I usually is power everything with one windmill so that everything stays in one general work area, and have our living quarters somewhere else nearby. Doing this requires some engineering though, as you will need transmissions and toggles for every contraption that you add to the windmill--it won't be able to power everything at once. I would also argue that it really doesn't need to either; what we generally do is switch on the helve hammer when we need to work blooms/plates, and otherwise switch on the quern or pulverizer as needed when the helve hammer isn't in use.

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet...trophy room. If you like collecting things, you absolutely need a trophy room, and a library to go with it to store all those lore books you'll run across(if not playing Homo Sapiens). Many things you can store in display cases, while books you can stash on bookshelves. Scrolls and tuning cylinders can both be stored on scroll racks. As for paintings and tapestries, these are great for decorating walls, and you can put your chiseling skills to the test by building custom frames for them.

I'd also recommend a storm bunker, for those times you just don't want to deal with the temporal storms. Even if you have sleeping through them enabled, it's still nice to have a safer spot to sleep, just in case a booger spawns.

[Ursiak]

On 8/22/2025 at 9:41 PM, Ryilo said:

I prefer different buildings, so I can make them bigger if needed, if I build a "base" with different rooms they end up being too small or too big...

Yeah, me too, especially since the area I picked is perfect for a little village, but the main building turned out waaay too big! 

How does smithing benefit from windmill? I was only thinking about using it for grinding stuff, but I'm still a beginner and only got to bronze when it comes to smithing. Trying to find a way to smith iron right now. 

Why is it better to put animals inside? I'll write down all the rooms I gathered from everyone's messages at the end  

On 8/22/2025 at 10:20 PM, Echo Weaver said:

For my new base, I bud person like myself. Then I built out a nearby ruin (I guess the whole area is a village ruin) into a barn and bisected it for sheep/pigs. 

2. Once you're in midgame, it's hard to overestimate how much storage you'll need. Even with the large stack size for ore nuggets, I had to move from chests to crates pretty quickly for smithing. Imagine everything you're collecting in quantity will need its own crate eventually and build out your space accordingly.

3. It probably is better to make the windmill and forge its own building.

There may be more lessons learned. I'll think on it. 

I was wondering if there are any bigger type ruins like a village, but I couldn't find anything online. A village ruin sounds so cool!! And a cathedral!!!!!

All of those points are really interesting, I'll try to put everything together at the end

18 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet...trophy room. If you like collecting things, you absolutely need a trophy room, and a library to go with it to store all those lore books you'll run across(if not playing Homo Sapiens). Many things you can store in display cases, while books you can stash on bookshelves. Scrolls and tuning cylinders can both be stored on scroll racks. As for paintings and tapestries, these are great for decorating walls, and you can put your chiseling skills to the test by building custom frames for them.

I'd also recommend a storm bunker, for those times you just don't want to deal with the temporal storms. Even if you have sleeping through them enabled, it's still nice to have a safer spot to sleep, just in case a booger spawns.

Thank you, it's nice being here!

Trophy room is SUCH a cool idea! Especially since I love collecting unique items and I'm picking up all the unusable clutter I encounter.

Ah, I actually play with a mod that removes all the enemy creatures because I don't do well with first person horror, even in a simple art style. So i turned off temporal storms as well, since they don't spawn anything. I was thinking about turning the mod off when I feel comfortable enough but the game is challenging enough without the monsters to me.


Thank you everyone for your replies, I haven't actually expected anyone to help me, that's very nice. From what I gathered from your messages and my own thoughts inspired by them, I need: pantry, bedroom, kitchen, room with just the tools, a storage way bigger than I thought, trophy room, library, smithing room, leather-making, furnace room. Can't say much about automation because everything you guys are mentioning sounds like magic to me. 

So I figured I could do it like this:

Main house: kitchen and a room with tools and two chests for things not organised yet on the ground floor, with pantry in the basement. Bedroom, trophy room, library and maybe leather-making on the first floor. Huge storage on the second floor. 

Windhill connected to a greenhouse (if these work in the game?): grinding stuff, maybe leather-making

Smith's building: furnaces, smithing and all that.

Anything I missed? Once again thank you all!

[Ryilo]

With a windmill you can have helve hammers connected, and you can use them to turn iron bloom into iron ingots, blister steel into steel and to make metal plates, it saves a lot of time. Then there is a mod that lets you use the helve hammer to make the other things that otherwise you'd have to do manually.

I prefer to put the animals inside a big barn for realism and to better manage them, as I don't have to worry about animals or monsters while I feed/harvest/move them.

Don't forget lightning rods to avoid getting them killed.

[LadyWYT]

Technically all you really need is...whatever suits you for your particular gameplay.  That could mean shoving everything into a dirt box, roughing it out in the open, building an elaborate fortress, or just build a little village with a special building for each different task.

If you're into mods and don't like monsters, but would still like a nice challenge and trophies to go with it, I recommend checking out the Fauna of the Stone Age series. The series adds different kinds of animals, all of which have their own pelts and taxidermies, which makes for a fun time building a trophy room/hunting lodge. There are several modules to choose from too--some add aggressive creatures and some add more passive wildlife.

21 minutes ago, Ursiak said:

I was wondering if there are any bigger type ruins like a village, but I couldn't find anything online. A village ruin sounds so cool!! And a cathedral!!!!!

There are definitely bigger ruin types out there, but they're a little more rare to find. Though I do feel that ruins have seen some improvement in 1.21 in that regard...either that, or I've just been lucky with my test worlds.

 

23 minutes ago, Ursiak said:

Can't say much about automation because everything you guys are mentioning sounds like magic to me.

Automation isn't as hard as it sounds. If you get lost, there are various tutorials you can look up online to help you get started, but the handbook itself explains things pretty well. Generally, the automation doesn't get complicated until you start trying to hook multiple things up to a central source of power, in which case it can be tricky. The easiest method for just starting out is to start with a basic windmill, and either swap out parts as needed(helve hammer, quern, pulverizer, etc), or invest in the materials to make each device its own windmill(which will take some time to accomplish).

As for the quick rundown on the aforementioned devices...the quern will let you grind up grain into flour, and softer rocks into mineral powders. The pulverizer is used for crushing harder rocks and various ore into mineral powders--depending on what you need to crush you may need to invest in high tier metal for the pulverizer caps(some minerals require iron or even steel caps to process). The helve hammer removes a lot of the tedium from smithing, since it can turn iron/steel blooms to ingots, and ingots to plates--both of those things take quite a bit of hammering if you do it manually.

Keeping in mind that when it comes to automation though...the machinery only functions when there's enough wind to power it. If there's not enough wind, you may need to invest in a better windmill(5 sails is the maximum size), wait until it's windier to accomplish the task, or just do the task manually.

[Ursiak]

20 hours ago, Ryilo said:

With a windmill you can have helve hammers connected, and you can use them to turn iron bloom into iron ingots, blister steel into steel and to make metal plates, it saves a lot of time. Then there is a mod that lets you use the helve hammer to make the other things that otherwise you'd have to do manually.

I prefer to put the animals inside a big barn for realism and to better manage them, as I don't have to worry about animals or monsters while I feed/harvest/move them.

Don't forget lightning rods to avoid getting them killed.

Ah, I understand now, that makes sense! 

I didn't even know lightning rods existed and my house is very tall so I better figure them out now, thank you for letting me know.

20 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If you're into mods and don't like monsters, but would still like a nice challenge and trophies to go with it, I recommend checking out the Fauna of the Stone Age series. The series adds different kinds of animals, all of which have their own pelts and taxidermies, which makes for a fun time building a trophy room/hunting lodge. There are several modules to choose from too--some add aggressive creatures and some add more passive wildlife.

There are definitely bigger ruin types out there, but they're a little more rare to find. Though I do feel that ruins have seen some improvement in 1.21 in that regard...either that, or I've just been lucky with my test worlds.

 

Automation isn't as hard as it sounds. If you get lost, there are various tutorials you can look up online to help you get started, but the handbook itself explains things pretty well. Generally, the automation doesn't get complicated until you start trying to hook multiple things up to a central source of power, in which case it can be tricky. The easiest method for just starting out is to start with a basic windmill, and either swap out parts as needed(helve hammer, quern, pulverizer, etc), or invest in the materials to make each device its own windmill(which will take some time to accomplish).

As for the quick rundown on the aforementioned devices...the quern will let you grind up grain into flour, and softer rocks into mineral powders. The pulverizer is used for crushing harder rocks and various ore into mineral powders--depending on what you need to crush you may need to invest in high tier metal for the pulverizer caps(some minerals require iron or even steel caps to process). The helve hammer removes a lot of the tedium from smithing, since it can turn iron/steel blooms to ingots, and ingots to plates--both of those things take quite a bit of hammering if you do it manually.

Keeping in mind that when it comes to automation though...the machinery only functions when there's enough wind to power it. If there's not enough wind, you may need to invest in a better windmill(5 sails is the maximum size), wait until it's windier to accomplish the task, or just do the task manually.

That mod does look very interesting, thank you for recommending it to me! 

The ruins sound cool, I wish there was a list of all possible structures so I could check them all out, I haven't gotten any big ones in my world.

Thank you for explaining automation so nicely, definitely sounds less intimidating. 

 

Thank you everyone for your help, recommendations and explanations. Feels amazing as a new player to be so welcomed and for others, more experienced players to be so eager to help! I wish you all a very nice day  

[williams_482]

One little thing, I strongly suggest putting your pantry/cellar right next to your kitchen. Any fully inclosed, at most 7x7 room built of insulating blocks (stone, dirt, solid doors) will count as a cellar, and let me tell you, constantly running down to the basement to grab food and back up to actually cook it as been a real bother in my current home. 

[Bumber]

18 hours ago, williams_482 said:

One little thing, I strongly suggest putting your pantry/cellar right next to your kitchen. Any fully inclosed, at most 7x7 room built of insulating blocks (stone, dirt, solid doors) will count as a cellar, and let me tell you, constantly running down to the basement to grab food and back up to actually cook it as been a real bother in my current home. 

I have my kitchen count as a cellar. If it spoils quickly, it's stored there so I don't forget it. If it spoils slowly, fetch a stack from the insulated cellar when you run out.

Don't need to worry about the minor difference in spoil time when the food is intended to be eaten ASAP.

Edited August 26, 2025 by Bumber