Ashland base

[Lodrigues]

Did anyone try building a base in Ashlands or neighboring area? I am doing an all skeleton playthrough and I noticed that there are some 300 quality iron nodes.

Since I wont be needing food as skeleton and I plan to do a vast industrial complex for churning armor and weapons I thought it could be good area.

I wouldn't mind some advice about settling Ashlands, what can I expect and what to look out for.

[Body of Eggs]

Originally posted by Lodrigues:

Did anyone try building a base in Ashlands or neighboring area? I am doing an all skeleton playthrough and I noticed that there are some 300 quality iron nodes.

Since I wont be needing food as skeleton and I plan to do a vast industrial complex for churning armor and weapons I thought it could be good area.

I wouldn't mind some advice about settling Ashlands, what can I expect and what to look out for.

I've done it! My base is literally at where the Sonorous Dark and the Ashlands biomes border so the Ashland side always has wind yet 2 inches into the Sonorous Dark side, no wind at all. It's bizarre but hey, your close to all the AI cores and Ashland recruits (via Recruit Mod) you could ever possibly hope for.

I've been churning out katanas, unholy armors, and dustcoats along with Hashish from Hemp hydroponics. No one bothers you if you build near the water and have your walls setup in such a way that it forces enemies to swim to your base's turret defense systems.

What to expect:
- Skin Harvests. Dunno if they stop when you align with them, but I found it odd they attacked my skeleton-only settlement for skin. They're the main threat and they hit like a TRUCK against Skeletons. Not only do they have high-tier stats, they have mercenary clubs which do 20% dmg against robots.

Often times they're cleave damage + potential to gang up on your lower-stat guys will kill you faster than they're individual stats. Expect to train your guys (or recruit guys) up to at least 40-50 in their major stat pool? Good place to train your skeleton army's toughness tho.

Always build your base around killing other robots and try to train at least some of your main squad with fragment axes or weps you can use against robots as well. To this end, the meitou paladin crosses that drop from the High Inquisitors in the HN territory actually have insanely good stats against robots. They're not bad to pickup if you're at the point where you can siege bases or stealth K.O. important NPCs at night.

I find a good defensive force of sabres + crossbows + heavy weapons to come in for flanks + one solid martial artist to kill survivors is a good formation. Crossbows are really just there to stunlock skeles and sabres are to nullify their mercenary club dmg with high melee defense guys.

- Reavers. They usually marinate in acid rain as they cycle through their dialogue prompts for me. I had to geniunely open up a wall so we could have a fair fight after I noticed one reaver assault group had 50 hp limbs just by standing outside my base.
- Southern Hivers (Sometimes).
- Random skeleton roamers like sniperbots, legion scouts, security spiders, etc. Not organized into raids so I don't think they're that much of a threat and can be useful harpooners if recruited.

Given how defensible the Ashlands are compared to every other region specifically for skeletons, its literally the safest place to run a bustling smithing industry. I'm at 400k Cats because I like roleplaying as a caravan with my recruited legion scouts and screamers. All we do is sell drugs, swords, and armor.

Additionally, so long as you have hydroponic hemp research, you'll be rolling in advanced smithing that requires fabrics as it constantly rains near the Sonorous Dark / Ashland biome so long as you have rain water catchers. Further out in the Ashlands I've always found well water very polluted and instead of rain, snow, so I never found it that feasible to settle further out there.

You'll be happy to know I have never had a Prayer Day near the Ashlands.

[Body of Eggs]

Lastly, I'd say setup a bughouse or something near the entrance of your gate and put nothing but skeleton beds near it. Skeletons make up for their lack of armor slots with very quick repairs. I've had situations where I would have a medic squad pull back my main vanguard during a skin bandit raid and shove them into the skeleton repair beds + locking the door to the bughouse.

This separated the Skin Bandits attention:
- some went to kill my turret defense guys
- others were still trying to finish my sabre defense force.
- and others tried breaking into my bughouse or had assaulted its interior by following my medic squad.

I eventually won out by out repairing enemies.

Caution: I believe Skin Bandit weps do full damage meaning they don't hurt your limb and leave red health bars behind for your skeleton repair kits to patch up quickly. Its literally a big chunk of blue health that's removed fullstop. So I found it was often a must to build more repair beds to heal dmg I couldn't usually out on the field.

[Body of Eggs]

P.S. expect the Southern Hive (outside of the copious amounts of Skin Bandits) to be a nuisance while your caravans try to export your goods away from your base to say Mourn or Flat Lagoon. Your not really near another settlement so your going to be fairly isolated. Bring all the resources you need to build essential walls + processors + power production + housing + storage + skeleton repair beds.

After that, your all set to afk and let the base play itself.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

It still shocks me that walls can't be attacked in this game. Black Dog HQ is a perfect example of perfect base building, nobody can even get into it!

Really, what's the point in stronger walls if even the derpy fence is invincible?


The end result is of course, players can make stupid elaborate killboxes with no means for the AI to counter them. Or you can even just completely wall off your city, and dismantle the wall when you need to leave lol.

[Body of Eggs]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

It still shocks me that walls can't be attacked in this game. Black Dog HQ is a perfect example of perfect base building, nobody can even get into it!

Really, what's the point in stronger walls if even the derpy fence is invincible?


The end result is of course, players can make stupid elaborate killboxes with no means for the AI to counter them. Or you can even just completely wall off your city, and dismantle the wall when you need to leave lol.

Walls can't be attacked? I know there was this one time some Berserkers kept hacking at my walls to get at my harpooners but other than that the AI is very weird and will most of the time, funnel into the killbox. Its weird what the AI decides to do at any given time during sieges. I understand AI behaviors like the Black Dragon Ninjas targetting food resource the most, but there should be enemies that specifically break walls instead of first funneling into the killbox, lured by the gate, and then deciding to attack the walls where the harpoons or crossbows are at. Not sure how you would balance that honestly.

I know the perfect base is located in that desert at Shem near the Settled Nomads where you build your base around a pond, have two entrances, and have one entrance always opened and leading into the pond. The most busted base design I've ever seen. All you really need after that is fencing so your guys dont accidentally go into the pond when trying to perform a job and mounted crossbows on the roofs of houses.