The perfect earlygame base location?

[Kyo]

So I just completed my playthrough, exploring and conquering the entire map. Now I want to restart and build somewhere else, but I have a list of requirements for my new location.

My old base was located at okran's pride, it's a bountiful place, full with iron, copper, fertile ground, free animal skins, but I hate the holy nation. I accepted their presence until I could overthrow them, which made the place pretty ideal, it has everything and is central, but now I have set myself the requirement: Outside of HN territory, outside of UC territory, I dislike both factions and don't want their presence.

On top of that, I still want a fully autonomous region, iron, copper, stone, fertile ground and access to animal skin, while still being decently central.

I might have to take a compromise on something, but first I want to see all the options. I've already looked at a few potential candidates and browsed wikis, but its difficult to properly check areas, as prospecting crashes the game for me, so scouting areas for resources is a slow process that I would like some help with.

I've been thinking about vain, norhern coast, hidden forest, iron trail, leviathan coast, but all of them have annoying downsides. Top left corner, while probably not very dangerous to live in (although I refuse to build walls, so beaks will be more annoying and leviathans maybe a complete no), shares terrible pathing when trying to go into the world. Vain has good resources, but also dangerous animals for the early game. It's the most central of the locations, though. Shem also spawns beak things, maybe bordering the swamp, I can build a base there.

Hoping for good suggestions!

I am considering to wait until Hydroponics until setting up base, but that wouldn't really be a true "earlygame base", but I'm taking suggestions for both.

[EN16M471C]

Since I saw This location while watching Aviticus Dragon's videos it became my favorite Base spot.

Since it lies on the border of Shem (arid) and The Swamp It has all - copper/iron nodes, both wind and biofuel (hemp) eletricity otpions, water (wells and rain collectors), stone and fertility. You can also ally with the Hounds which are nearby for extra protection. No raptors, plenty of Beak Things for meat and skins. Central location. And for the added bonus it does look beautiful.

Only one nitcpicky issue I have with it is how zone tranzition sound gets annoying overtime.

Oh and Tax free Zone ;)

[Radiosity]

South of Hub, more or less directly east from Squin. Ores, fertile (arid), plenty of stone, regular garru packs and bone dogs, and it's Shek territory so easy enough to deal with. Also safe, plenty of bandit raids to supply additional weapons/armour/ for selling or melting, and is just a stone's throw from two waystations and the swamp.

Or go a bit further south onto the border of the swamp if you want some riceweed farming on the go.

[Wigbert FriggleShit]

Plateau in the Border Zone, can easily be found on world map. East of the hub, southeast of the Dustking tower, northeast of a Waystation, on the border of Skinner's Roam.

Pros:
- HUGE building area, and long cliff on the southeast edge of the mesa provides a perfect natural wall with only small holes to plug.
- 2 decent quality coppers and 2 decent quality irons found in southwest corner of mesa that can be easily walled off. Can also put down 3+ stone mines in same area
- Wind power is mostly stable and ideal in this area
- No major raids, just starving bandits, dust bandits, and ninjas. No more than 15 hostile members in these raids.
- No hostile fauna, but plenty of garru and goats to hunt in the immediate area for skins and meat. Also great pack beast hunting in the desert just east of the mesa
- No taxes or Prayer Days, truly neutral and lawless area
- For stealth training, huge groups of starving bandits patrol the desert to the immediate east, great for sneaking behind during night for huge stealth bonuses
- Quick access to Shek Kingdom and Holy Nation, as well as the Waystation that provides building and robotic supplies as well as some food and crops to get you started
- All crops growable to some extent and plenty of room to put down fields. Excellent for growing hemp and cactus.
- Caravans will visit quite regularly

Cons:
- Far away from high-level areas, meaning longer trips to-and-fro to these areas when treasure hunting or conducting other business
- Iron and Copper is not quite 100% quality
- Wind power will very occasionally die down once in a while, so having excess spare wind generators or batteries is recommended
- Raids are relatively common, occurring anywhere between every 1 to 3 days or so. Having dedicated harpoon gunners is recommended
- Wheat provides about 60% fertility and a reduced growing rate. Greenfruit, Cotton, and Rice have an even more difficult time growing here than Wheat, so you will need more farms and farmers to compensate

If you don't mind being away from the high level action and having to invest more manpower and landspace to farming, it does not get much easier than settling in this area. And if you have hydroponics, you have basically achieved ultra-easy mode, since you will now have eliminated the arid farming issues and have plenty of space to build the structures necessary to house the hydrofarms.

[Kyo]

Originally posted by EN16M471C:

Interesting place, but I tbh find the swamp to look super creepy, it always puts me off and I dislike traveling through the swamp because of it (the pathing is also terrible in the swamp, but the main reason is really how it looks)

Originally posted by Wigbert FriggleShit:

I'll check this place out. I've been a little stuck on wanting fertile ground, but maybe I'll just eat cactus and deal with it until I unlock Hydro. Having to manually hunt for leather is mildly annoying, but I have to compromise on something, maybe. Being away from high tech areas is no biggie, I have plans for that. I know where all the important locations are and I calculated how many books/cores etc I need, lagoon and deadlands is close to that place, which are both easy places to get plenty tech for the earlygame needs, on top of a few other good zones being closeby for tech. From my calcs, all I need is 1 core, 1 eng research and 19 ancient sience books. On top of that, you don't need to carry tech home, you can take your spoils to any nearby town, purchase an empty building and build a research bench, naturally this costs $$$, but really not much, you can take a small shack and a small bench, it doesn't matter, you can drop it off there and pay from there, at home your scientist does the work. Each trip should easily pay for this+food, but for this reason I also want my base to be fully autonomous, I don't want it to be necessary to actually go home with fighters to progress the base, only for emergencies to protect my people (since I have a few self set rules, such as no running away from attacks on the base, no walls or turrets, etc)

[Wigbert FriggleShit]

Originally posted by Kyomaku:

... I also want my base to be fully autonomous, I don't want it to be necessary to actually go home with fighters to progress the base, only for emergencies to protect my people (since I have a few self set rules, such as no running away from attacks on the base, no walls or turrets, etc)

I'd say my old mesa base achieved full autonomy once I had hydroponics up and was producing double the power that I was consuming (using small wind generators), so as long as you have 2-3 decent fighters at base if you plan on omitting walls and harpoons, they'll easily be able to take on any of the default threats thrown at you. Speaking of omitting walls though, I'm not sure if wild goats and garrus will go for your crops, I think only river raptors do that from my experience.

[Jayne]

I tend to gravitate towards Mongrel and the fog islands early game - get 20mph fun speed and only carelessness (or the ai bugging out) will cost you.

Green and arid, with water in all except the highest peaks, and close to the HN for raids on caravans in Gulf and Pride. Mongrel has a great array of shops.

You can build pretty close to the east gate and hire mercs - it'll be a challenge, but gives great training for low-early mid.

Only shortcomings resource wise are skins - again, hunting in Gulf and Pride can remedy with the bulls.

Other option (hear me out) is flats lagoon - hive caravans are so common, you can get free town guards while they're there. Fertility is poor at 50% (as is copper) so hydroponics is recommended, but the hivers stock the latter often. It's more central for the late game, but more dangerous overall - raids can bring Reavers apparently, although I'm yet to see it.

[Kyo]

Originally posted by Wigbert FriggleShit:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/kenshi/images/b/b8/Kenshi_all_in_one_map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190327232444

Are you sure the place is without prayer days? According to the wiki, it's in their territory range. I looked at the place, it sure looks interesting, but having no paladins/prayer days is a must.

Edit: @Jayne, I'll think about it, although I don't like settling in a beak thing territory, I've never done it before and so I'm a little anxious about it, don't know how it'll go in the early stages, I really like to set up as early as possible, grabbing just enough tech to level all crafting lines while feeding myself, so I can be on my way and run across the map to come back to 80+ smiths to get me endgame gear. Edit2: What I meant to say, my farmers and labourers are pretty potato at staying alive, I tend to hire mercs in the early days for base defense vs raptors in okrans pride for example, it protects my farmers well and helps them get some experience, need to hold out until I have food/beds and money in general kicks in from production.

[Wigbert FriggleShit]

Originally posted by Kyomaku:

Are you sure the place is without prayer days? According to the wiki, it's in their territory range. I looked at the place, it sure looks interesting, but having no paladins/prayer days is a must.

The mesa is completely neutral. In fact, you will not see patrols from ANY major faction except the unfriendly ones I already mentioned.

This is a more accurate and easy-to-read political map in my opinion, you can find the mesa just above the letters "-ONE" in "BORDER ZONE":
https://i.redd.it/1crp9e5gx9m31.png

The de facto rulers of this territory are the Tech Hunters and Trade Ninjas who live in relative peace with eachother (usually), and honestly I don't remember ever even seeing their patrols in the area either, even though there is technically a road that runs on the far eastern side of the mesa.

[Xyebane]

The best early base is Fog Islands (ironically?) Just to the north east of mongrel there is a plateau that is just outside of mongrel's build radius. It only has one access and can be defended super easily. Mongrel is only a few seconds away if a fogmen patrol is too much for you. There are no enemy raids. Mongrel provides easy access to supplies and Fog Princes are excellent source of early income. Fog Islands are also a great place to train fighting skills, stealth skills (inc lock picking and assassination). It also has a good launching pad into the Northwest for looting.

Once you've skilled up a bit and looted the whole NW, you can abandon it for Shem, Darkfinger, Greenbeach, or Fishman Island (depending on your next goals). Shem makes a good central location for a main base, but you want to be able to handle up to 3 beak things before settling there. There is a spot right on the border with the swamp where you can get stone, iron, copper, water, 100% arid fertility (cactus/wheat) and 100% swamp (rice/hemp) all in one town. It is also right off a road for visitors.

[tikiman572]

I'd personally recommend Vain. Over on the western edge of the area, on the plateau above the western-most Hive Village, is a nice clearing with an Iron Node and Copper Node right next to each other with a sizeable Stone Deposit right near them too. With the near constant rain, you won't be hurting for water and, when you get Hydroponics, you can have them set up on your rooftops to be constantly watered 90% of the time.

The local wildlife provides excellent training too for your units. Just be sure to have some baby sitters on hand to swoop in and rescue your trainees for their first couple of sorties lest they find themselves killed and eaten by Beak Things.