ICountFrom0

It's the same old tips as eveybody else I'm afraid. Explore more. If caving is your style, jump into every hole, but don't forget to swing the prospecting pick to see if it's in that region at all. If surface exploration is your style, you have to go unreasonably far between your first checks if it's not even showing up on the list. Remember, it's giving the wide area results of the prospecting pick based on the odds of it existing, based on the stone types in the region. You could do that yourself by looking up the surface stones your seeing, and then finding the odds of it having tin. If you've got a surface rock that can't have tin, then any tin you'd find would have to be deeper then that... So you'd be deep caving to find out what stone is below that... or you'd move on until the surface stone changes. Hundreds of blocks. Thus "explore more" because people check with the sample pick way too often at first. I'm guilty of that too, I burned up an entire copper miners pick doing survays every 16 blocks or so around my base for the entire region. A detailed geological survay to find... nothing much. Also, explore more, because the THIRD method, is to find merchants and buy the tin directly, or the urns that can contain tin. And the fourth method is to collect the urns from ruins. Also, don't forget, the fallback position. Sift sand until you have enough gold and silver to make black bronze. It's a horrible thing to even contemplate, but it CAN be done.

I'd show you a picture of my spawn, except it's being problems. I spawn underground. No. Not like that. Not in a cave. INSIDE THE GROUND. Stone blocks overlapping my body. Eventually though it does put me on a cliff, and the REST of spawn is a rather nice mountain valley. I'll have to come back here and fix this, eventually. Mod List I've not found a place for my final base yet, but I've found a nice spot that'll do for a temporary base at least through the first winter. A lake near the ocean to the NW. I want to be at least CLOSE to the ocean this time, and I hope this sea reaches out when I finally explore that far. I went big on food based mods this time. If I can find "just kelp" I might add that, and I might still add "just peppers" latter. The general idea was to just throw myself in the deep end with ALL the food stuff. Some of this makes it harder, some makes it easier, it does make it more complex and delightful to play through. The other complexity I wanted to add is the bricklayers and axle (soon to be a feature) though wall. With quarry to suport it. I want to build mostly in stone, and that will make it easier, and more complex. Next run? Possibly all those cloth and weaving mods, or one i found that does for wood with oiled wood, what bricklayers does for dyed clay bricks.

Must be part of the restrtictions put on the site to keep the spammers from being too horrible, because I know this codebase can do embeds and images. Shame really, I'd have liked to post my builds each time. But they do what has to be done, and if there's no other way, so be it.

I've used up the limit, so there isn't any for a second topic? This is why I prefer to host the images elsewhere and embed them here. Is there anyway to do that?

Nope, it won't let me post the last picture. Not sure how I should be doing this in the future. I can't seem to embed from imgur, and I used up the entire allowed size of images long before I was done with the build. Any tips?

The first picture here is when I found where I decided that my base was going to go. It's a bit of a run from the spawn, but it's not too bad. Okay, it is pretty bad and I ended up going splat on the runback to just my base a number of times before I got my first gear. Eventually I ended up making up an entire series of roads to help out with that. I wasn't just going to build though, not yet. Have to do a few things to prepare for the winter, right? There was so many ruins in my seed. So I was constantly being tempted to dig them out, take the blocks home, and stuff them in containers. Then sift everything. I also got some nice loot from the containers in them. Course, when one thing works, this game likes to make sure that nothing else will. So while I had all those ruins, and all those vessels ... I had no clay. My first clay took me in game months. I had enough copper before I had enough clay. Then I found my first clay. Blue. And I fell in love. Once I brought it back, made my first containers in pit kilns on the shore, and had my first storage ... yes, that's when I started to find clay. Piles and piles of red clay. Back then, it didn't matter as much. So, my first structure, just this little cabin out on the water. Logs and dirt. I thought larch was horrible, and I didn't mind using it, and losing it, and using it up. Learned my lesson latter once I discovered how GOOD the stripped larch log texture is. Oh well. Getting more caused me to explore latter, and I enjoyed the trips. I might enjoy exploring more then I enjoy building. Not sure though. It's a close question. Nearly winter before I got that first charcoal started. Wanted enough of it that I wouldn't have to worry about running out. Took down most of the nearby trees to do it. Went through multiple axes. Yes, I've learned my lesson. Early game, just go fast. Though, I still managed to enjoy myself even with the slow start. Step two in the build. One central max size room, and then slabs around it of the same size. Water logged slabs and that single block in the center was the easiest way to hydrate the three fields. I moved the pit kilns into a space in the back, and after a few tries I was able to make sure that it wouldn't catch fire. Spent the entire summer mining copper and looking for enough tin to get things started on the next step. I should mention that once things froze, every bear in the world packed up and walked through where I put my living room, like it was a highway. So I'm rather glad I put walls up on the outside parts. Changed from birch to quad birch at this point, I'd not noticed it existed before, and once I saw it, I knew I wanted it. Inside view. With just one sealed room the storage was just piling up. So I couldn't make it look good, and I kept losing things. I also was both oddly proud, and oddly frustrated by the thatch roof. Still, I think I was really getting a feel for what I liked, and what I didn't like, at least with the materials that I had in the region. Fanned shale for the basement. Slightly fancier then other blocks, but also a bit more spendy in resources. I needed a basement at this time, not just because my storage situation was spilling onto the floor and getting out of hand, but because I'd eaten through last year's supplies, and I'd have to grow things this next year. I could have spent the time living off the berry bushes I collected, I guess, but it was time to do something more. So for me, that meant going deeper. By the end of winter, I had 6 sealed rooms, AND hallways between them. I stripped the roof off, but sealed it with a floor, and my hunt for slate started in the spring. It took most of the year to find and bring back enough for even one roof. I'd also discovered just how good the stripped larch looks with the sandstone. And in finding, and ripping down, three entire forests of the stuff to make this build, I'd found a mountain tall enough to have glacial ice. So those farm patches are full greenhouses. I still say glacial ice feels a little bit like a bragging move. Okay, I don't THINK it was a game year between these two pictures, I must have gone hunting, and THEN did the rebuild, and I'd managed it just before winter. And of course, I got the roof on by spring. That feels right. I've got the frames of the second floor of two more rooms in place in walnut, but I'd not actually found and destroyed the third larch forest yet. And I'd run out of saplings again. So, each time I ran out of charcoal, I tore down the structure, and rebuilt it larger, saying that the NEXT batch, the NEXT batch would be the last one I'd ever make. This one was pretty much max size, with a little rounding of the corners to help hide it in the structure. You can't JUST have a dirt building that large with the rest of your structures and feel like you've got something good. Add in some grass roof, some wattle 'n daube, and a bit of creative storytelling to yourself, and now you've got something that isn't too horrific to leave in place. Over the course of the last two years, any time I could dig a hole and capture an animal, or wall it up against a cliff, or otherwise get one stuck, I'd mark it, and move on. This felt like the right time to try domestication. Course, with bears that seemed to be able to hit through walls, I took every precaution I could. Of course the critters still managed to clip out and I lost a few before I'd done enough building to secure them. I had to build a few thousand blocks of road for the goat to chase me home without one of us getting lost again and again. Worth it? I'm honestly not sure. For just the goat, no. For the merchants that were out that way, and the huge deposits of metal. Yes. One of those attempts I fell down a hole and just barely lived. Found a massive vein of copper, and andesite. I knew I'd have to use it in a building, so I used it in the barn. Due to the glitches, I tried to contain the animals in pens below ground level. I'd hoped that the force of the extra blocks would push them back into the world inside the barn. Instead they just got pushed up to the surface. Made the build look a little strange, but I'm not disappointed in it. Andesite, block by block, and without mods, enough of it for drystone and brick. I'd gotten good at dropping blocks by the time I was done. Stripped pine to give brightness to the build, and oak that I'd used for the floors in the house, but this time as walls. Finished it off with a blue clay roof, if I remember right. Four rooms. Hallways. And five greenhouses. The center one was for one tree of each kind that I liked from my region, but not until I'd finished the mosaic out there filled with fruit trees. Aged Ashlar, Aged Blocks, I lost count of the number of weeks I spent, RL, hunting for ruins to get just enough of them. You can also get a peek of version 2 of the berry patch. That got one more upgrade before I was done, hope I've got a picture of it. You can see the entire region where I built in this one, good lightning too. Yes, there's more flowers under those bees, as well as more bees under those bees. Version 3 of the berry patch had lanterns under the wall, and even more of them hanging above the path to help light it up and keep it safe. The farm part of my base eventually became even larger then the main part of the base, but I had at least figured out the size I wanted it to be and was able to get the start of a wall around it before the end. Spent the next winter setting up windmills. I told myself this platform was temporary. That I'd move them higher up once I had enough fat and resin. Of course I never did. They stayed just the bare minimum height above the rest so the blades didn't break when snow built up. One of the glamour shots of my inside, before I moved, finally, into the other rooms I'd made and set up a metal shop in one of them. Yes, that's a full set of bronze anvils. It was also a very nice view to have while I was going PLINK PLINK on them, so I don't regret the windows. Since my windmills weren't high enough to get bonus power, I ended up with multiple helve hammers, two in this shot, but eventually all four. And yes, same anvil as from below, I wasn't QUITE crazy enough to make another one of those. The very last merchant I found was one that sold luxuries. Once I did, I went all in on trading things from merchant to merchant and getting anything I could to sell to the others. And then I checked obsessively to get chandliers for every room, and my own resonator. Really didn't feel like a proper bedroom until I had that in place. Okay, okay, still having dirt scaffolding from making the cieling might have been part of it too. Just how rare ARE these things anyway? I only found one quartz vein that had any geodes, and it had TWO of them. On the other hand, I wasn't shy about blasting any quarts vein that had gold or silver until there was nothing left. And those showed nothing more dramatic then chests and chests of quartz. I did, eventually, turn it into proper glass and do roofs for the greenhouses with it. Also put a little system up to help remind me what I'd planted last without having to write and rewrite signs. Not the best work, but it did the job. I stand by my statements. If you have time to make a beehive kiln, your world is very nearly dead. You'll stop playing soon. I think it's something about being secure enough in your resources that you don't mind taking an entire year on a project of this size. I wanted it built into the wall originally, but the hatches are NOT secure. Maybe part of my frustration was building it so many times until I found a place that worked. Note, this was not the final time I rebuilt it. Just one picture left... guess one more post won't hurt.

No mods, my first run. I normally take lots of screenshots in minecraft and make a good story out of it, but I didn't really understand what pictures would be important in Vintage Story. So I mostly focused on my base and how it came along. Right, got the pictures up, thanks for your patience. So, what do you think?