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[Belisk]

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[RasaNova]

Some people start in a mostly flat area, and then build a foundation using a combination of short poles, horizontal beams, or half walls. This gives you a flat structurally sound surface as large as you want without ever needing to use a hoe.

[BGratz]

Terraforming is a complex story
By terraforming yopu raise the amount of Instances by a lot, and you cant get rid of these instances (well there is a mod that remove all terrforming in a area)

However my thumbrule is that you need to stay under 3000 Instances at the end of the terraforming.
Raise land not by staying on top, instead raise it by aiming with the raise tool a bit under the plateau hights at the flanks , so that you raise the ground in one step to final high.
The bit uneven ground you get as result you can simply cover with floor tiles
only really relevant heights are the ones you place structural integrity relevant poles

[AllOutWar76]

If you don't mind using console commands, they do exist for flattening.

[OnlyZuul]

Originally posted by Mabuz:

One of the larger hurtles preventing me from further expansion of my base, and the creation of new ones is the need to terraform before beginning construction, To "level" a small area properly. You need to lay out floor tiles, snapped to each other. Raise (or lower) the terrain.

I stopped reading here because you're giving out completely bogus information. None of what you just said is accurate. You can properly level ground with a workbench, hoe, pick, and some stone. Nothing else. What's all this nonsense of laying out floor tiles? What you're doing just wastes time. Get good at leveling folks, it's no more difficult than that.

[BGratz]

and sometimes its blasphemy to terraform land
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2438066857

[Pyro Penguin]

how can it take you 6 hours to level out the ground? it should be more like 6 minutes

the hoe levels the terrain to the same as where you're standing, so stand still and spam all around you with the hoe, once its all the same level just move and continue spamming as much as you need

if an area wont raise or lower any more with the level ground option then you need to switch to raise ground or use the pickaxe to lower it, then spam some more level ground to make sure its all even

and..... thats it, you're done

[BGratz]

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

how can it take you 6 hours to level out the ground? it should be more like 6 minutes

Just 3 examples
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2422008279
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2406044373
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2404379950

Sadly these lead to crippled FPS, thats why i stopped making them
But it cab easy need 20 Hours to make a even plateu, even with using debugmode

[BGratz]

This moment i test
https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/8
it allows you to raise/level land via Chat
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2438113642
Cant say if it is good, too early in my test

[BGratz]

Well no idea if it was the mod, but hello good old bug
Hoped to see you not again
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2438125840

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by Mabuz:

Well, considering if you don't terraform. The ground comes through the floor of your house, or your building goes underground in some areas. Even better, stone breaks if the bottom piece isn't touching dirt. I think it is necessary.

I used stone pillars and stone walls as my "foundation" and if the walls weren't touching the floor (even anchored to another stone) it immediately broke.

Stone walls need to be fully supported because they're stone bricks without mortar. You can bridge small openings using arches or core wood, but they're mostly intended to be a bottom layer.

The stone pavers are good for leveling out an area though. They essentially count as ground when things are placed on top.

[Maelstrom]

The ground doesn't need to be perfectly flat. Use wood beams to lay out a foundation and you should be able to get that flat enough with just the hoe, maybe use a vertical beam if a corner sticks out somewhere. If you see ground or grass poking through the floor just pull up the floor tile and hit with the hoe again.

[Pitchforque]

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

the hoe levels the terrain to the same as where you're standing

This is the most helpful comment so far. The game is pretty bad at explaining how this works and it sounds like this might be what's causing you trouble.

Clicking with the hoe raises/lowers the ground toward your character's current elevation. Shift-clicking with hoe attempts to even out the terrain where it is already, regardless of your character's elevation.

Each bit of terrain also has "soft" minimum/maximum elevations it can be raised/lowered to using the flatten command. You need a pickaxe to lower more than that, and you need to spend stone with the hoe's "raise" command to raise it further. Even using these, there are also "hard" minimum/maximum elevations that are impossible to go beyond.

So as Pyro said you basically want to walk to the elevation that looks right and flatten as much as possible around you without moving. When you need to move to reach other spots, just make sure you are always standing on elevation that has been "copied" from your starting point.

Assuming you're going to cover the area with floors anyway, the only important thing is that your floors are blue integrity if you intend to build off them. Beyond that, you might just want to keep the terrain low enough so it doesn't poke through the floor and look ugly. All you have to do is rip up some other flooring, find a spot that's more the elevation you want, and hit the offending spot a couple times with the flatten command.

Edit: Here's another tip. When you find a good area to build, start by finding a high point and get the whole area as high as possible using only flatten. That way you know your upper limit before having to spend any stone. From there, find the lowest point and see if it's high enough to suit your needs. If it is, flatten everything to that level. You've spent no stone and may just need to pickaxe the highest points a bit to get them down to the right level.

[GunsForBucks]

If you are up to core wood it becomes very easy.

Place an upright tall core wood pillar on the highest point.

Place horizontal core wood logs on it for the desired orientation along the bottom.

Any of those that are above the ground on one end place short pillars under them to go into the ground. Big rocks can be handy to anchor into as well.

Build out from there. Most of my houses do not even have floors on the ground, they are all supported by log beams.

You can do essentially the same thing with the lower level nice looking wood pieces but they are not as strong and you can't build as high as you can with the log <core wood> ones.

I prefer to work with a natural terrain than fight against it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2432165732