Renovating/Restoring Ruins

[Daev]

I started restoring and renovating a ruin near my spawn in my forever world.  I'm only around 40 hours in this world and I'm deep into bronze age.  While waiting out the winter I decided to spiff up some old ruins that happen to be near a pond I'm planning to live by long term, not sure what the ruins used to be but from the rough outline of what I've deemed the foundation it appears to had a modest space with either a tower or chimney.  I am leaning towards a chimney because of a mantle nearby and with the close proximity I guess that this used to be a place people lived, possibly a village.  I had very little to go off so I'm turning it into a partial renovation to breathe new life into the ruins for my purposes.  The ruins appeared to have some depth indicating a basement which I am adding and expanded staircase and doorway leading into from the exterior.  I am also turning the old chimney into a tower for now, unless I decide to return it to its probable former use.  The attached screenshot is what was left after removing all rubble and broken blocks.  I might update this later when I make significant headway.  Does anyone else do things like this during their downtime?

Edit: This screenshot also shows the gaps I had already filled with the granite I have a bigger supply off.

Edited February 19 by Daev

[Broccoli Clock]

I'll use ruins as staging spots on travels but don't tend to repair them more than making them habitable. The question is, do you use the Better Ruins mod? I'm going to guess no because you didn't mention it, but if you are wanting something far more complex (although not necessarily more complete) some of those ruins are absolutely lovely.

I personally don't use BR purely because to me they seem out of place and OP in the vanilla world, although as I say some of the builds are just beautiful, but if you were looking to specifically take over one and live in it, it definitely offers many more options than vanilla does.

[EnbyKaiju]

Depending on the kind of world I'm trying to build I will occasionally rebuild some of the ruins. They can make for great way-stations for when you go long distance and you want somewhere to stop and resupply/warm up. Early on when I started playing I used to take them over as starter bases because I was still figuring out what I wanted to do, now I love them as side projects.

[LadyWYT]

I'll sometimes turn a larger ruin into an early base, but more often than not I loot any bony soil/cracked vessels/chests and then leave them be. Sometimes I'll break a ruin down for materials, but it's not that often.

[CastIronFabric]

doing this with Better Ruins mods is extremely satisfying. I have one file in which before I even started my base I came into a small ruined village, restored it as my base. very satisfying. I might go back to that file and finish it, its just that its two offical updates behind.

 

[marmarmar34]

Started a modded run not to long ago and just refurbished an old blown up house with a translocator in it. Stamped earth is such a convenient block.

[HalfAxd]

I definitely do this, though usually with a ruin that has a little more "charm" to start with...  //media.invisioncic.com/r268468/emoticons/wink.png

Would love to see what you build.

[Daev]

9 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I'll use ruins as staging spots on travels but don't tend to repair them more than making them habitable. The question is, do you use the Better Ruins mod? I'm going to guess no because you didn't mention it, but if you are wanting something far more complex (although not necessarily more complete) some of those ruins are absolutely lovely.

I personally don't use BR purely because to me they seem out of place and OP in the vanilla world, although as I say some of the builds are just beautiful, but if you were looking to specifically take over one and live in it, it definitely offers many more options than vanilla does.

Unfortunately after playing with Better Ruins for a while, literally from my third test world on and every long term run after that.  I discovered that the mod uses a lot of micro blocks that can do a number on performance, I used to get stutters all the time... I still really enjoy the mod even though I had to axe it. I do feel as though I appreciate the vanilla structures a bit more now though, there really isn't much left of them which allows me to run wild with my imagination and makes restoring them a bigger challenge depending on how much of the original ruin you want to retain.

[Daev]

I have since added on to the ruins.

I have fully restored and renovated the basement. The first floor is mostly complete and the roof trim around the bottom of what will be the second floor ties it together well.

I am having second thoughts regarding both the second floor and my tower design which has brought me to a temporary standstill.  I'll mine some quartz for glass while I think on it. I may change the tower back into a chimney and turn the section above the front door of the second floor into a balcony since I do plan on fully walling in the ruins and pond it is located next to.  Also, just in case anyone is curious this is modded but in a very vanilla plus way. I have walking sticks, backracks, better trees and better sticks, primitive survival and some of the Fauna of the Stone Age and Flora mods. Also Equus cuz honses.  I have a good deal more but it's all in that vein of enhanced mechanics mods.  Also the world gen settings are slightly altered, I made the world bigger and 70% landcover and tin/copper surface deposits boosted to rare and uncommon respectively.  Oh and if anyone has any ideas on what I could do with the tower/chimney and second floor feel free to send some ideas this way! I tend to struggle around this point when it comes to base building.  I plan to have the first floor be a common area/kitchen/dining space with the second being dedicated to living space for myself.  I still want to retain as much of the shape the ruins left me so I'm fine with cramped = cozy.

[Zane Mordien]

I exclusively live in rebuilt ruins. Now my rebuilds aren't very pretty, but it is just how I like to play. Since the ruins changed in 1.18 or 1.19 (I forget) when they removed all the old ruins, I have a hard time finding a good ruin around spawn. Nowadays I will often start the game with the Better Ruins Mod turned on but I have tweaked the settings so the loot in them is basicalliy 0 and I turn off the Mega ruins so they don't load up. Once I find a structure I like near spawn I turn off the mod and enjoy my ruin.

[Daev]

I've completed the restoration of the structure itself.  Only things needing completion is the chimney (because I need to figure out how to make 3 separate fireplaces on each level filter out of the same stack since I'm using realistic smoke mod) furnishings of the first floor and the kitchen in the basement.  Once I've done some proper caving I should hopefully have enough decor to fill the empty spaces.  So for now I have a functional yet blank dwelling, truly a bachelor pad.

Front exterior.

I went with the chimney and adding a little balcony.  I believe I could improve the balcony but I'm going to save that for when I put time aside for chiseling.

First floor. Going to make it guest friendly, though this is designed for one person really.

This is what I did for a bedroom (bunk bed supremacy O7 ) I wish it did it justice but believe me the seat is placed for a perfect view of a lovely mountain.

This is a night sky view from the balcony.

I have a cellar and kitchen but those are not interesting enough to showcase I believe.  Maybe once I've furnished them I'll showcase them here or in the builds forum.