How do you recognize a good building site to make a full base?

[EmberStar]

I'm wondering how people pick out a building site to build a larger base or fortress. Especially in the original Exiled Lands map. It feels like every time I find a wide, level place there's an Exile camp nearby, or something else that either blocks building or makes it less than ideal. Valuable resources, dangerous Elite Monsters, or it's a nice level plateau surrounded by a thirty foot cliff on all sides and I'd have to *also* build a road to get followers in and out.

Or do people just NOT build a big central town and instead just make a bunch of smaller, specialized outposts? IE, don't bother making a Greater Wheel of Pain in your crafting town, just build a walled box next to the camp with a chance at decent followers and so on.

[DarkFire]

With enough foundations it's pretty much possible to build a fair sized base wherever you want. The southern river valley is good for this because it's possible to build over and through the water, again with enough foundation blocks. Another favourite of mine is the grasslands to the north of the wall - again with enough blocks it's possible to make a surprisingly large flat area on which to build your main base. Another possibility is the iced-over lake to the north west.

Don't forget that building close enough to, or over, a spawn point will effectively delete that spawn point.

All that being said, I tend to build a main base then small way stations at other strategic places on the map e.g. near to the entrances to the volcano or in the jungle. Mostly within easy reach of places I know I'm going to want or need to revisit for farming runs.

[Blast (AKA LostAmI)]

Look for a large flat area, or an area with land that you feel will provide good asthetic or defensive benefits that you feel you can take advantage of, it really mostly comes down to imagination. I built a castle in a vanilla server on the top of one of those pillars separating the salt flats from the grasslands, It's square overall but the detail work is what brings it together. Just picture it in your head, and try and translate it roughly into the game, then iterate on it until it's what you want.

[thurgond]

The requirements for an ideal base change as the game progresses. In the early to mid-game, you need to be close to iron, stone, wood, fiber and water. In the mid- to late-game, everything is about thralls, thralls, thralls. In the Exiles Lands, any end-game base that isn't very close to an obelisk is a huge pain.

Moving a base is bother and a large the base is likely too big to move.

I don't bother with the Greater Wheel of Pain except on Siptah near a leyshrine to handle surges. In the Exiles Lands, a 4 slot wheel near Sepermeru, maybe another near the Mounds or in the volcano, and a single occupant wheel near Sinner's Refuge are what I use until I have the T4 crafters I need. If a wheel fills up, time to do something other than play thrall hunter. You do not need walls for a wheel of pain away from your base. Just a platform for the wheel, a fire and preservation box are all you need and should be small enough to not attract a purge.

Even on crowded official PvE servers, there are always one or more scenic locations near an obelisk where you would not be able to thrive if you moved there without proper end game gear, leveled top tier thralls and plenty of hardened brick. Some of my favorite base locations have been at the north end of the Bridge of the Betrayer, in the volcano and especially on or near the Upper Staging Area in the swamp.

[Jaq]

I never build in flat areas. Those always lead to boring designs, whereas having to adapt to natural geography forces you to be more creative.

In PVE and PVE-C, my only criteria is to be within a short ride of an obelisk. I look for scenic spots and weird geometry. I also try to use as few foundations as possible, and leave lots of natural ground. I'm always disappointed when I come upon giant blocky Minecraft builds.
Fence foundations and pillars are under utilized as stability points in PVE. Also remember you can always build upward, you don't need a massive land claim.

When I was a newbie, good natural resources were critical, but once you know what you're doing that doesn't matter anymore. You just max your encumbrance and bulk farm in a single excursion, then teleport home. I used to build outposts, but once you start logging in less frequently those become a big hassle to reset decay timers. Just find a spot close to an obelisk and mark nearby players' teleporters on your map.

In PVP, it's a very different story. I'm mostly looking for concealment and pay zero mind to aesthetics. Once they added the ability to pick up building pieces after you placed them, I took up a nomadic strategy and carried my house on my back, designed to fit all the essential crafting tables in as small a space as possible when I laid the floor plan down. I'd move every few days, preferably at night since I had everything I owned on me. On those occasions when I tried to build a large base and make a stand, I liked spots up against the ghost walls with limited angles of approach. But someone always found a way to crack whatever I built, either with larger numbers or while I was offline. I never spent much time raiding others, so I probably have a knowledge gap on what works best for that. Anyway I'm never touching PVP again once Sorcery is added, that's going to be such a trash-fest.

[marcusaddamsson]

Close to an Obelisk. More anything else, imho.

[EmberStar]

I play in single player, so I'm not concerned about PVP. Anything I build is essentially an "RP fort," since I'm pretty sure I *could* just build a big cube and put all the needed crafting stations into it. (I'd rather not do that, but it's an available option.)

I haven't played extensively in quite a while. I've played since the Great Thrall Update, because some of my thralls actually have levels. A fair number are still the older, obsolete NPCs that spawned at a fixed level and were hard-locked at Level Zero when the big patch happened.

What this means is that both Thralls and the building system have changed a lot (and I wasn't that great with either system before hand.) I think I had the idea that it's possible to pick up/reclaim building pieces without destroying them now? How does that work? Do I need a repair hammer? Or just something to store all the building parts in while I teardown and rebuild?

One of the patches also apparently changed crafting a ton. I can't seem to find a bench that can make twine, all of the recipes have vanished from the Firebowl Cauldron, and I no longer seem to have access to most of the armor I thought I had unlocked. I'm guessing I need to get more Shards and consume them to unlock more building options again.

I'm not sure I understand why so many of the replies are obsessed with Obelisks. I've found a couple, and they seem like horrible things I'd rather avoid. Between the constant Corruption and being swarmed with undead, I've been avoiding them. Why exactly would I want to go anywhere near one, let alone build my base there? Something to do with the Map Room? I built one for the journal entry, and then tore it down. It didn't seem to do anything useful, and it was insanely huge.

[marcusaddamsson]

Obelisks are the only fast-travel in the Exiled Lands, without admin/mods. Once you 'e' on an obelisk, you can then fast-travel to the matching pillar on the map room. The corruption you receive is negligible, as you're only there for a few seconds.

On a good server, there's a public-accessible map room near all the obelisks, so you can quickly travel all over the map.

[EmberStar]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Obelisks are the only fast-travel in the Exiled Lands, without admin/mods. Once you 'e' on an obelisk, you can then fast-travel to the matching pillar on the map room. The corruption you receive is negligible, as you're only there for a few seconds.

On a good server, there's a public-accessible map room near all the obelisks, so you can quickly travel all over the map.

Oh. I'm not on a server, I'm in single player. And given that I'd have to build all the map rooms to travel to, that seems like a lot of hassle for very little gain that I care about. As I said, so far I've only seen a couple of the Obelisks, and neither of them appeared to be anywhere I actually wanted to return to. Thank you for the information though.

[DarkFire]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Obelisks are the only fast-travel in the Exiled Lands, without admin/mods. Once you 'e' on an obelisk, you can then fast-travel to the matching pillar on the map room. The corruption you receive is negligible, as you're only there for a few seconds.

On a good server, there's a public-accessible map room near all the obelisks, so you can quickly travel all over the map.

Oh. I'm not on a server, I'm in single player. And given that I'd have to build all the map rooms to travel to, that seems like a lot of hassle for very little gain that I care about. As I said, so far I've only seen a couple of the Obelisks, and neither of them appeared to be anywhere I actually wanted to return to. Thank you for the information though.

For single player, a mod called Enhanced Cartography will be your friend for the purpose of moving easily around the map.

[EvilVictor]

For SP/Coop I tend to build two bases. One for taming thralls, usually near one of the bigger "cities," and the other as my actual home/base.

I have a few areas I really like, my favorite is probably H6 on the larger cliff above the east side of the river.

+ No grass
+ TONS of iron in the area
+ Plenty of stone, wood, fiber, aloe, berries
+ Thralls (black hand, not the best but easy to find bearers)
+ Salamanders (thrall XP, leather, ichor)
+ Close to the sinkhole and its obelisk
+ Very close farmable gator world boss (easy legendary gear + dismantling bench = win)
- Far from black ice
- Far from brimstone (sort of)

If I want to spend too much time building and have even more stuff around me I'll go for the southern island close to the intersection of A/B 7/8 and skip having a second thrall taming base. Solves the black ice and brimstone issues of H6.

Also, to pick-up your old building pieces, just get close, point at it and hold 'e' another cool addition to this is that all attached parts that would have been lost before will now be collected at the same time so you can literally just run around and pick-up the foundations and get almost everything. Just collect any containers, work benches, etc first.