Stone building

[Lizzard]

Why is the ability to build with stone locked away behind the discovery of iron?

I mean, in order to get iron, you need to get to the Swamp. In order to survive long enough in the Swamp, you need upgraded hear. In order to upgrade the gear, you need an established base. In order to establish the base, you need hours of resource collection.

I'd like to build the start or a base early and then move on to expand it, but without stone blocks, most of what I build I just end up destroying and rebuilding. I don't like having to build an entire wooden base and building for a few hours, only to THEN be able to introduce stone walls and floors after the fact. My OCD switch flips on and drives me crazy at that point over this!

[tyrael]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

Why is the ability to build with stone locked away behind the discovery of iron?

I mean, in order to get iron, you need to get to the Swamp. In order to survive long enough in the Swamp, you need upgraded hear. In order to upgrade the gear, you need an established base. In order to establish the base, you need hours of resource collection.

I'd like to build the start or a base early and then move on to expand it, but without stone blocks, most of what I build I just end up destroying and rebuilding. I don't like having to build an entire wooden base and building for a few hours, only to THEN be able to introduce stone walls and floors after the fact. My OCD switch flips on and drives me crazy at that point over this!

I get you man, annoys me as well. I have no sure answer for why. The game does it CONSTANTLY with buildings and stone isnt even the worse. Black marble you discover so late that's probably pointless to even bother with it on a large scale if you're a progression oriented person. I guess the aim was to ease the way to building and not overwhelm with options or maybe give something fresh all thruout the game.
However I can suggest you a few things to "cheese" those 2 measly pieces of iron you need. (my assumption is you're using troll set and are in the bronze era)
1. swamp, oozers - during the night is when they spawn, if you use poison resistance potion they dont pose much of a threat. Everything else can be dealt with with a bronze buckler parry or a bow.
2. swamp, fishing - im not sure how common this knowledge is but you can safely fish from your boat for giant herring and their extra drop iron ore (not scrap iron but ore!). It will take time depending on your luck but it's safe. so technically you can get a little iron easily without even setting foot in the swamp.
3. swamp, crypt - main thing. You can use the chair trick to loot a crypt without having the key.
4. swamp, stag breaker - most annoying, tedious and dangerous method. You use stagbreaker almost like a radar. You hit the ground and look for 0 floating. only a few things give that feedback, so if ther is no stones, no small firs it must be a scrap pile underground.
5. mistlands, armor - i dont remeber which pickaxe you need to mine those rusty armor pieces but a seeker soldier can help you with that; akin to how a troll can mine copper or tin ore for you.
6. mistlands, ruins of bridges - those tall ruins have a lot of cage pieces in them. When destroyed (with dmg as well) they yield iron. Once you have 2 and can build the table you can deconstruct the bottom part and wait for it to collapse. They can be found even in mist free shores.
7. mountain, cave - if i recal correctly doors in caves have a tiny chance of giving iron when destroyed (like braziers for bronze).

What i would suggest is 1. Go around the swamp, following the border line, that's surrounded with a safe biome like black forest and look for oozers. They kinda glow in the night so they're easy to spot. should take you 1 full night maybe 2. Drop chance for scrap iron is quite high being at 33%. Ofc have a portal in a safe location nearby so if you die it's not much of an issue cos your gear is not in the middle of a swamp. Gray dwarves on this occasion sometimes provide a good distraction for draugrs, wraiths etc. You could probably do this even sooner than having a troll set and bronze buckler but obv with more risk.

[Mharr]

While you're patrolling swamp edges, look for scrap piles poking out of any steep banks too. They do spawn occasionally outside the crypts.

[DJ Protogen]

There's a mod for no crafting station restrictions, so you can build with stone with no stone cutter

[jonnin]

not to ruin the game for you but there is a second type of stone later....
they expect you to rebuild or make new bases; its how the game was designed, but the 'new' difficulty modes let you avoid the grind part if you want. I just build temporary minimal crafting stations shacks until I unlock iron and stone. Another way you can do it is build the interior out of wood and put the stone up around it later; nothing prevents that.

[knighttemplar1960]

Earthen walls are indestructible and require the hoe and stone. They were used by the Europeans (and Vikings) for defense during the bronze and iron ages (until the invention of gunpowder).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maptj8eJzgA

The hoe allows you to do this in game by hand (just like it was done in the Viking age). When you get to the iron age you can build a stone cutter and put stone walls on the inside of your earthen wall for aesthetic purposes while maintaining the defensive value of the earthen walls on the outside. (Later you can swap marble for the stone).

[Oakshield]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

Why is the ability to build with stone locked away behind the discovery of iron?

I mean, in order to get iron, you need to get to the Swamp. In order to survive long enough in the Swamp, you need upgraded hear. In order to upgrade the gear, you need an established base. In order to establish the base, you need hours of resource collection.

I'd like to build the start or a base early and then move on to expand it, but without stone blocks, most of what I build I just end up destroying and rebuilding. I don't like having to build an entire wooden base and building for a few hours, only to THEN be able to introduce stone walls and floors after the fact. My OCD switch flips on and drives me crazy at that point over this!

I used to be annoyed with this as well, until I decided to use a complete different approach.
Instead of building my entire base, I'm only building what is needed for the first two biomes.
Being someone who likes to build on an island plateau, I'm usually raising the island to a level I'm able to live at without having to face the water entering my basement in a storm. Usually that's 3-4 clicks up with the hoe; or 6-8 stones.
At that point I start building a house, large enough to hold a bed, a workbench and the first two extensions and several chests, as well as a campfire. A 4x4 block is already enough for that.

Once I've got enough stone, I'm going to raise the rest of the island to a similar level and carve out where I want my main building to be. Using the 4m wooden logs for the outlining works quite well.
When that's done, I build the kiln, smelter and a campfire for the cauldron at a short end of my "basement". A forge is build at a long side and both the forge and the cauldron are being covered by some roof pieces, which I can remove later. All stone I haven't used up yet is "stored" as piles at the plateau, making it also easier to deal with monsters as it would either distract them or force them to go around it.

Once I got iron, I build the stone cutter, start working with stone floors and rebuild the kiln, smelter and forge as soon as I got the stone floor done. A workbench will be added at the other long side of my building. Only after that I start building my stone walls, the stone stairs and eventually the entire next stone (ground) floor; all supported by stone pillars.
The floor above that will be wood, just as the walls, as by the time my base is done, having the ground floor done with stone walls is enough.

But most important, while having a temporary shack may look inconvenient, it saves a lot of time when you don't need it anymore and plan to destroy it; compared to destroying (part of) it and completely rebuilding it in stone again.

Thorin :)

[tyrael]

Originally posted by Oakshield:

Instead of building my entire base, I'm only building what is needed for the first two biomes.
Being someone who likes to build on an island plateau, I'm usually raising the island to a level I'm able to live at without having to face the water entering my basement in a storm. Usually that's 3-4 clicks up with the hoe; or 6-8 stones.
At that point I start building a house, large enough to hold a bed, a workbench and the first two extensions and several chests, as well as a campfire. A 4x4 block is already enough for that.

Id love to see screenshots of that and im sure those wouldnt hurt the whole topic either.

[muchdebate]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

Why is the ability to build with stone locked away behind the discovery of iron?

I mean, in order to get iron, you need to get to the Swamp. In order to survive long enough in the Swamp, you need upgraded hear. In order to upgrade the gear, you need an established base. In order to establish the base, you need hours of resource collection.

I'd like to build the start or a base early and then move on to expand it, but without stone blocks, most of what I build I just end up destroying and rebuilding. I don't like having to build an entire wooden base and building for a few hours, only to THEN be able to introduce stone walls and floors after the fact. My OCD switch flips on and drives me crazy at that point over this!

You raise a number of points.

1-Iron is locked behind swamp in a few places.
Crypts - the major source and you need the "key" from the previous boss on your person to get in.
Oozers - generally out at night, when attacked will divide into two blobs and occasionally drop a single iron scrap
Nodes - There is a post up above this one that talks about using stagbreaker as sort of radar. Cool; I'll have to play around with that, as I've only "found" like two scrap iron nodes ever.
Fishing - again from the post up above - I've never done it since I loathe fishing in this game.

2-In order to "do well" in each biome you need the resources from that biome. This is why sneak and bow are always essential when first exploring a new biome; there is that "holy crap" learning curve and then once past things get easier.

3-Bases. Back in the Black Forest hopefully you ran into surtling cores and hopefully discovered portals. No one needs any more than a single main base and then maybe some smaller satellite adjuncts with some kind of dwellings and a bunch of trunks to accumulate crap to be brought back to "home base".

We rarely use stone for anything other than the Main base (okay the roads from the ports at each end of our main continent to cart stuff "back home" were a really long and complex exception to this) and what turned out to be "Portal Central" basically a giant portal hub where the portals are arranged in somewhat alphabetical groups (each group has it's own multi-story building) to make travel easier. We also have a group of "temp" portals named things like Temp01 or Tempe 2 that get re-used when it's not worth it to maintain a more permanent portal to that area.

Our "main base" is the most complex, up to date, high tech (current high tech) and gets improved as things go on. Most of the satellite "bases" are wood with earthworks and a moat (or a partial moat if it's on the edge of a steep enough hill/cliff).

4-OCD or other forms of distress at "rebuilding". To each their own; I like my subsidiary bases to "look nice" but all be quite individual. I'm not the "explorer" of the group, and he makes the most rudimentary "satellite bases" possible (workbench, portal, chests and usually but not always a bed and fire combo) so I come in and redo his work - he doesn't mind and it's fun that way for both of us. A lot depends on finding a good group to adventure with.

Oh - and on that note, we are lucky enough to have one person who runs the "home/realm" computer continuously so at any time any of us have access to that "world".

[Pat Fenis]

You don't need a large base to get some bronze tech and go into swamp. 4 walls, a roof, and slap down a palisade around it to contain a couple smelters and kilns. Done. Save all your resources and splurge on that gigachad plains base later. Even if you could get stone working earlier, you still need the wood iron beams to make really sweet builds anyway.

[lorifel]

Originally posted by muchdebate:

No one needs any more than a single main base and then maybe some smaller satellite adjuncts with some kind of dwellings and a bunch of trunks to accumulate crap to be brought back to "home base".

Unless you are playing a no portal run of course

[tyrael]

Originally posted by muchdebate:

Nodes - There is a post up above this one that talks about using stagbreaker as sort of radar. Cool; I'll have to play around with that, as I've only "found" like two scrap iron nodes ever.

I mentioned the stagbreaker method only bcos of the context of the question which is pre-iron age. It's not the intended purpose, obviously; more of side effect or cheese.
A lot of people dont know, not sure if you do, you can use wishbone (bonemass drop) for more than just silver node hunting. It also works in the swamp for the very exact thing as the stagbreaker, it's just way more convenient and effective. You can also find treasures in the meadows with it but that's besided the point; just wanted to complete the usecases for wishbone. Oh and... as for the the stagbreaker some guides tell you to look for "too hard" feedback text, the are wrong. I spent hours and hours - nothing. Once i paid attention to the "0" feedback, well let's just say i wasnt happy with people who have no clue what they're talking about and make guides. Or maybe an update changed that, i dont know. Good luck, you're gonna need it!

[Nerevar]

the reason is very simple : progression isnt limited to your gear. but also your base building materials. its really that simple.

black marble will have alot more use once ashlands releases within the next 3-4 months aswell.

the reason is simple :

wooden structures have statistics. stone has statistics. black marble has statistics. each is better than the former in terms of attributes it has.

if you gave everything to the player instantly there would be no more point in game progression. it would be just gone.

you arent supposed to make 1 base at start and stick with it for good. you CAN do that but it wont be pratical given the enemies also get stronger and the base attacks become stronger.

example :

wood has low hp takes rain dmg if not roofed and takes alot of dmg from nearly all sources of dmg.

stone is resistent to slash and pierce dmg and chop dmg. it also has alot more health than wood. and it doesnt take rain dmg and makes wooden structures on top of it immune to rain dmg and it counts as GROUND for wodden structures.

black marble has all the extra benefits of stone but also resists ALL phys dmg by 50% (aside pickaxe which only certain enemies can deal) and is FULLY immune to elemental dmg. and it allows building in shapes you cannot do with stone.

as you can see there is a clear reason why you dont gain access to the stronger base building materials right away.



also as a sidenote : if you want stone building early you can go to the swamp and fish a swamp fish out of the water. then bring the fish home. then keep fishing it from a pond you can toss it into again. this will randomly give you some iron. or kill some oozers. they can drop ironscrap with a 33% chance. you only need 2 iron for the cutter. you still need the smelter either way.

but its pretty simple to unlock stone early.

but farming stone gets easier and faster the farther into the game you progress. with ashlands marble is probaly also gonna get alot more sources over there.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by tyrael:

Originally posted by Oakshield:

Instead of building my entire base, I'm only building what is needed for the first two biomes.
Being someone who likes to build on an island plateau, I'm usually raising the island to a level I'm able to live at without having to face the water entering my basement in a storm. Usually that's 3-4 clicks up with the hoe; or 6-8 stones.
At that point I start building a house, large enough to hold a bed, a workbench and the first two extensions and several chests, as well as a campfire. A 4x4 block is already enough for that.

Id love to see screenshots of that and im sure those wouldnt hurt the whole topic either.

Here is a sample build of mine. The lodges are historically accurate.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2981922207
There are 4 of them arranged in a square. In an actual Viking settlement they would all be dwellings and the courtyard in the center would be used for outdoor activities like animal husbandry, gardening, a kiln and smelting metal.

Since its just me and my wife playing, the center lodge is for sleeping, the lodge on the right has the kiln, smelter, forge, and workshop. The lodge on the left is the cooking and meadery area and the rear lodge (not pictured) is for storage. You can see that there is an interior pallisade to keep the boars in and farther out there is the earthen wall to keep raids out. There isn't a dry moat all the way around it there is just pits that the bridges go over.

An actual Viking trelleborg would have 4 such 4 lodge groups inside a circular earthen wall with stone or dirt paths crisscrossing in the middle and a dry (or wet) moat going all the way around the outside with drawbridges at the cardinal points in the earth wall where the stone or dirt roads would exit the trelleborg.

[muchdebate]

Originally posted by tyrael:

you can use wishbone (bonemass drop) for more than just silver node hunting.

Sigh. Maybe I'm just unlucky. Carried that thing around for a lOOOONg time never found it working for anything other than silver

[tyrael]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Originally posted by tyrael:

Id love to see screenshots of that and im sure those wouldnt hurt the whole topic either.

Here is a sample build of mine. The lodges are historically accurate.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2981922207
There are 4 of them arranged in a square. In an actual Viking settlement they would all be dwellings and the courtyard in the center would be used for outdoor activities like animal husbandry, gardening, a kiln and smelting metal.

Since its just me and my wife playing, the center lodge is for sleeping, the lodge on the right has the kiln, smelter, forge, and workshop. The lodge on the left is the cooking and meadery area and the rear lodge (not pictured) is for storage. You can see that there is an interior pallisade to keep the boars in and farther out there is the earthen wall to keep raids out. There isn't a dry moat all the way around it there is just pits that the bridges go over.

An actual Viking trelleborg would have 4 such 4 lodge groups inside a circular earthen wall with stone or dirt paths crisscrossing in the middle and a dry (or wet) moat going all the way around the outside with drawbridges at the cardinal points in the earth wall where the stone or dirt roads would exit the trelleborg.

Respect for having the knowledge and for taking the time to share it all, thank you! That settlement looks really nice. Wish i could visit hehe. Well done you two :)