Making pre-copper age starter houses that don't suck ?

[Kolyenka]

I'm not a great builder, but I can make something that looks pretty decent when I have a chisel, a saw, a bunch of wood types, various special blocks from ruins, and maybe some stuff from a building goods trader. But my stone age houses are almost always just. Granite cobblestone walls, rough fence or quartz glass window, thatch roof. And even when I put the effort in to try and do interestingly shaped houses or add details around the yard, the outside is always boring at best and kind of ugly at worst.

My current game is in a snowball earth, and I have larch logs, pine logs, granite/sandstone cobble, and sandstone bricks. How the hell do you make a nice house out of that stuff ??? Especially when the only slabs or stairs are cobble ?

I'd hugely appreciate any tips/pictures/whatever, cause I've been running into this problem every game, where my starter builds are horrendous and my later builds are pretty great, and it's honestly quite annoying.

Edited February 16, 2022 by goaliemagics

[Streetwind]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And your post kind of gives me vibes of "anything not chiseled looks boring to me". Which is entirely fair, if you feel that way - just realize that in that case it would make this a loaded question for which there is no answer. Unless, of course, you don't mind the answer being a mod.

If on the other hand you're up for using non-chisel options to spruce up your builds:

• Two different kinds of mudbrick are available to you. Dark mudbrick also comes in slab form.
• Stone path can be crafted from collected stones, and comes in slabs and stairs.
• Ceramic shingles come in two different colors (blue clay and fire clay), and also give you slabs and stairs... and a roofing option that isn't thatch!
• You can place vines on outdoor walls to give them an ivy-overgrown look and add some color. I think knives can cut vines...?
• Rough-hewn fences work in windows as primitive pre-glass lattice coverings, though given you are in a cold area, that option may be less desirable to you (they don't seal).
• Make clay planters and flowerpots and put them up around the place. Use slabs to make sills outside your windows and put some flowers there. Line your entrance stairway with them. And so on. A good variety of things can be placed in planters.
• Strewn straw blocks or packed dirt bocks make decent indoor flooring, though sometimes a checkerboard pattern of directionally placed logs, or just a floor of upwards placed logs can be quite nice too. Depends on your wood and tastes.
• Packed dirt also makes sense in an outdoor yard area, making it look like you've trampled all the grass there with your activities.
• A strategically placed tool rack can add detail to an otherwise bare wall. Just knap some random things to put in there. You don't actually have to have a use for the tools.
• Oil lamps on fence posts. Either freestanding or as part of fences.
• Put your firepits up onto cobblestone blocks to simulate a primitive hearth/kitchen. A clay oven fits right in next to them, even if you don't have a use for it yet.
• When building walls with something that comes in both slabs and full blocks, you can vary the wall thickness towards the outside to break up large uniform walls.
• Using logs as corner posts or roof beams is a tradition ever since the first days of Minecraft. A support beam in the middle of your room is also more visually interesting than a bare open space.
• A cobble block or two in an otherwise slanted roof looks like a crude chimney. Brick blocks, even more so. You can even run a pillar of blocks up the flank of your house and up through the roof to pretend like there's a large hearth there on the inside.
• Put a line of berry bushes along a fence to get a yard-with-a-hedge look.
• You can make awnings out of layers of sticks.
• Use ground storage in strategic places. Not just firewood, but also peat stacks, bricks, ceramic products, rusty gears... whatever you have that is ground storable.

I'm sure some others will have additional ideas.

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Streetwind

[Kolyenka]

6 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And your post kind of gives me vibes of "anything not chiseled looks boring to me". Which is entirely fair, if you feel that way - just realize that in that case it would make this a loaded question for which there is no answer. Unless, of course, you don't mind the answer being a mod.

If on the other hand you're up for using non-chisel options to spruce up your builds:

• Two different kinds of mudbrick are available to you. Dark mudbrick also comes in slab form.
• Stone path can be crafted from collected stones, and comes in slabs and stairs.
• Ceramic shingles come in two different colors (blue clay and fire clay), and also give you slabs and stairs... and a roofing option that isn't thatch!
• You can place vines on outdoor walls to give them an ivy-overgrown look and add some color. I think knives can cut vines...?
• Rough-hewn fences work in windows as primitive pre-glass lattice coverings, though given you are in a cold area, that option may be less desirable to you (they don't seal).
• Make clay planters and flowerpots and put them up around the place. Use slabs to make sills outside your windows and put some flowers there. Line your entrance stairway with them. And so on. A good variety of things can be placed in planters.
• Strewn straw blocks or packed dirt bocks make decent indoor flooring, though sometimes a checkerboard pattern of directionally placed logs, or just a floor of upwards placed logs can be quite nice too. Depends on your wood and tastes.
• Packed dirt also makes sense in an outdoor yard area, making it look like you've trampled all the grass there with your activities.
• A strategically placed tool rack can add detail to an otherwise bare wall. Just knap some random things to put in there. You don't actually have to have a use for the tools.
• Oil lamps on fence posts. Either freestanding or as part of fences.
• Put your firepits up onto cobblestone blocks to simulate a primitive hearth/kitchen. A clay oven fits right in next to them, even if you don't have a use for it yet.
• When building walls with something that comes in both slabs and full blocks, you can vary the wall thickness towards the outside to break up large uniform walls.
• Using logs as corner posts or roof beams is a tradition ever since the first days of Minecraft. A support beam in the middle of your room is also more visually interesting than a bare open space.
• A cobble block or two in an otherwise slanted roof looks like a crude chimney. Brick blocks, even more so. You can even run a pillar of blocks up the flank of your house and up through the roof to pretend like there's a large hearth there on the inside.
• Put a line of berry bushes along a fence to get a yard-with-a-hedge look.
• You can make awnings out of layers of sticks.
• Use ground storage in strategic places. Not just firewood, but also peat stacks, bricks, ceramic products, rusty gears... whatever you have that is ground storable.

I'm sure some others will have additional ideas.

 

Thank you, this is very helpful. I'm not actually that big on chiseling (my later game houses might have a little chiseling in the structure, but mostly I just use it to make more interesting furniture or stuff to put on tables), but having no saw or chisel (and thus very limited stair and slab choices) has left me pretty stumped. Sadly I don't have large amounts of clay in this current playthrough (getting it from ruin vessels and gravel/sand panning only) which cuts out mudbruck, shingles, etc, but lots of your other suggestions are very doable, and all of them are great advice in general. Thanks for taking the time to write this out ! My sad little starter base is gonna get a big upgrade now, lol.

[Maelstrom]

Also consider stone walls.  Does not require clay to craft (only rocks) and can be used for sides to buildings that have a different depth than blocks and vertical slabs have.