Flattening large area advice or tips

[Shadeling]

I'm looking to build my main base for my game. Are there any tips or tricks to flatten a large to huge area without mods. From the bit I've tried it is almost an exercise in futility to get any decent amount of land roughly flat.

is it just stand in a spot and flatten to that point use pickax for certain areas and keep going hoping and praying it works. Should i try a more mid approach flattening some lands and raising others to be roughly OK?

i also heard about performance hits if you do too much. Are these that bad that it just isn't worth it?

[MuscleBearGamer]

The size of the area you're terraforming matters as well.

If you do it so large that you are always loading tons of instances it will be nonstop fps drops with every move you make.

We made that mistake on our first playthrough and terraformed an entire island and after we were done we couldn't go from one side of our house to the other without having a 20+ fps drop from the instance loading.

It would only stop when we stopped moving. Once we started moving again it would begin trying to load instances form the other side of the island and cause more fps drops.

[AllOutWar76]

As mentioned already Terra forming will eventually give you issues. That said, try not to start at sea level and find the flattest terrain you can find that doesn't go to far uphill.

Even though it's a chore, you can always raise the land. On the flip side, you can only mine so deep from the ground. If you start flattening the land at a low point you can only go so far before you can't keep the ground level the further you go uphill.

[ShadowReaper]

Carry rocks.

Level ground from where you're standing outwards. Fill in shadowed crevices with "Raise Ground", level ground from the leveled-height you desire.

Should the ground not be as level as desired, then you may need to pickaxe lumps and fill crevices more.

If you Raise Ground to the height desired, and you form the perimeter, you may then use Level Ground on the inside to fill it mostly with Dirt, though you will still need to Raise Ground in segments resembling the pattern that a 5 would on the face of Dice.

It's actually harder to make a perfect incline than it does for a flat surface

[Shadeling]

my comp is probably about mid as it is rather old, but it should be well above min. the base i'm thinking of is probably familiar to a lot of people. in the meadows near the sea i found a semi clear area. problem it is on a incline. of course flat areas seem to not exist in this game. i haven't made it to the plains yet.

Will be making out of stone for the most part. a large building in the shape of a cross much like a Christian cathedral in shape. First floor storage, hearth, basic benches for quick repairs. 2nd lvl living are and other wise lets make this look cool. out of one way leads to a dock, another way out of the main building will by the main workshop with all the upgraded benches, out another way probably the kiln, smelter area, the last arm i was thinking a building for all my portals a kind of central hub.

surround the whole thing with stone walls and wooden towers near the gates.

note solo player here.

[Orakio]

While it's more time consuming due to gathering stones, I've found it's easier if you raise up to the level you want. You get one little neat raised square, then move your circle slightly off the edge so it drops just a little, and you can raise the next one up even or close. And seems easier to flatten it more evenly when you start out manually raising it to same-ish level.

It's best to start on fairly flat land, because you're limited on how far up or down you can go, relative to the original level. So if you're raising going down a hill, you'll get to a point where you can't raise it up even with rest, and vice versa lowering while going up hill.

I haven't done anything huge, but I've leveled off a few small areas for bases, probably the largest was a 28x6 rectangle that was pretty dang flat.

[stretch]

To flatten land you need to use a combination of the level ground tool and also fill holes with the raise ground and pick off high spots with the pick,
Terraforming is the process of moving around the dirt but it can only move it around so much. If you raise it too high you need to actually give it more stone to work with. The guy above says how to raise ground fast but doing this means if you touch the bottom with a pick it all vanishes just as fast as you created it. You can only squash it just so far before it wont go lower so you need to hit it with a pick and because you have built the pressure up squashing it down it can have a hernia and pretty much explode upwards in a huge vertical spire,
It's easy if you add a bit into holes, pick the top off high spots and then level it out with the hoe.

Or don't. If you have stone you can do what I have here. The inside of the 'castle' is entirely non functional. It's all original dirt under there. You can see how easy it is to create large open areas with stone blocks once you unlock them.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2421436936

Also there is the trick of using the stone pillars. Drop one on the ground and stand on it and level around you then add another and level around that. I have an old SS somewhere I will add in a minute to show you.

Good luck.

edit for SS
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2429083484

[Dreaminway]

Best tip I can give if you want to avoid lag is to use the terrain to your advantage. Instead of trying to flatten an area, build your base up on posts starting at a high point in the ground. Then build a frame. This puts your base's start above ground so nothing slips in. Only part you'll have to raise up would be where you set your campfire. If you don't want to see the posts you can easily snap the half walls parly into the ground along your frame.

[Bobucles]

The best way to have a well defended base is to build on an island. Enemies don't spawn on water, so you gain free defense without smothering the land in terraforming instances. Make sure the island is big enough for your ambitions, or you'll be doing insane terraforming just to build out the land.

[Netaris]

Removing ground is easier than adding some in this game, but be cautious, too much terraforming gonna affect the performances of the game (low fps in your base). You want to do the less terraforming possible, for the best result possible. Accept to have different levels into your base if you want to take a lot of space to build, with some stairs, etc.

To flatten the ground for one structure, I recommend you to put one tile of wooden floor to the lowest point, put yourself on it and flatten the ground from this position. Because the ground is flatten based on the height on your position, it give your a standard height. And when the flattening tool dont work anymore at some places, use the pickaxe.

[Lunacy]

Hoe as much as you can then switch to the cultivator to even out anything leftover.

[DeMasked]

Originally posted by Insanity Check::

Best tip I can give if you want to avoid lag is to use the terrain to your advantage. Instead of trying to flatten an area, build your base up on posts starting at a high point in the ground. Then build a frame. This puts your base's start above ground so nothing slips in. Only part you'll have to raise up would be where you set your campfire. If you don't want to see the posts you can easily snap the half walls parly into the ground along your frame.

This is what I do. Any generally flat ground is easy to use when you have wooden posts to help support the base platform for your house.

[jonnin]

the cultivator can help sometimes if the hoe is being stubborn.
you can lay wood floor tiles to see the areas that need attention, they can be buried or floating if the ground is not level and make it much more obvious that you have small humps and dips.
rock floor does wonders to overcome small dips and humps, due to its insane thickness.

but the best advice I can give is to raise a giant platform up with the raise terrain then level THAT with the pickaxe and hoe. This solves all the problems: the created terrain is more friendly to being flattened generally, and it keeps monsters away by being too high to jump onto. If it is troll head high, nothing that can't fly will bother you much -- they may shoot a bit, had one take my windmill to half health this week, but they get bored and leave with no real harm done.

[Crafty]

Here is my tip.

Flatten the ground the best you can and then lay down your flooring first. This will create a level foundation you can build off of.

Sometimes when doing this the flooring will want to snap below the surface, to avoid this find an area you think is raised slightly higher than the rest and start there.

You can also use the flatten tool on areas you need while you're placing the flooring down to smooth things out.

[Eightball]

The answer is '42'.

You can thank me later.

[Username]

DONT flatten a huge area.
Make a framework
i suggest for wood 12m Broad aka 4x4m core wood logs and raise only these small 2 lines in 12m distance.

Your FPS will reward you
It means you have one 4m high vertical Core wood
Then a 4m deep Horizontal Core wood
and then 4 Roof tiles, where the both outside rooftiles still touch the vertical Core wood

Maybe someone has pictures, i have none on this PC