I've been stuck in between "I should gather all the ashlands gems I can to prepare for september, and make a new better main base!" and "Actually, I think I might restart entirely and do a hard mode playthrough when the north drops?" so anyways- while I debate on building and grinding or not, here's some pics of the main base I ended up with, slapdash expansions and all.
(I thought about doing a flyby recording but I wasn't enjoying how freefly felt with smoothing on so maybe another time)
My main base was built around one of those "5 big rocks in a circle" pois and I ended up using the rocks to better support it while I was super early into understanding how to best build, so it's messy but there's some 'smart for the time' decisions I went with to make it a bit taller etc.
I went with a big circle design because initially I was thinking I'd support the entire build ON TOP of the 5 rocks, but I struggled to map that out when I was early into my gameplay- also it's a pretty wide spread between the rocks so without iron I don't know what all I'd have accomplished up there.
Spent a long time building scaffolding for that before settling on a lower design that circles around the rocks and just uses them to better support the build.
I dug incorporating the rocks in some areas, like a 'dented' hallway into the base because a rock pushes in.
One expansion was my portal hub. Just a big room with links to merchants and outposts and all that.
My Eitr box. Dirt floor because earthen magic or whatever lol
A couple external builds- I keep all the workbench and forge upgrades in their respective sheds so that inside I just have both benches by themselves. Didn't do this with the magic or blackforge benches, but they got their own ugly late addition second floor and open air work area (glimpsed above from outside).
Inside for most of my playthrough was one big room- by design. Late game I added a second floor to fit benches and some additional storage.
There are a lot of little things I can point at like the 2 pet rocks I keep (I found the POI that has like 20 of those guys REALLY early in my playthrough) but mostly I just enjoyed making the base around a central bonfire with all the 'cooking' tools hanging above it thanks to using and then deleting some single 1x1 wood floors to place them.
A downside to this design is, for one, space- I REALLY wanted everything all in this small area, and I could fit some extra stuff that I avoided but not 'comfortably' or without simply hiding them under the floorboards.
The other is related, and that's that a few comfort items simply don't incorporate well. I could shove a hottub in the corner and poke a second hole in the roof but, no?
I could slap a hearth under the floorboards because it won't look right anywhere but, no?
So the comfort around here is like 14 when it could be 18 (I have the maypole), but considering I just kept building on and redecorating a design I made when I knew nothing about the game, and the entire thing was 'meant' be surround the bonfire before I knew options existed, I'm happy with the limitation lol
Then, heading south you'll find the "main" portal which I keep untargetted for obvious reasons and all that- there's a dirt path leading to the water and my dinky makeshift port.
I HAVE made a slightly fancier (slightly) port before I made this one, but I opted for literally ugly basics lol
The prior port was made in a old world I initially started playing on this 'playthrough'.
Like 3 years ago I tried this game a few times and it never clicked- I reloaded my last world which started like 2 years ago and stopped before bronze- in THAT world I made a fancy port with parking spots and what not (only carve sized) but in this one I made this nonsense lol
I did end up making a fancier one outside my first swamp, but even then it was mostly just "a roofed area to drive the boat under" and not fancy parking.
Anywho- I've learned a lot about building through this playthrough- but sadly most of it went to tiny bits on outposts and not the main base- BUT- making this main base a home was really fun and has given me some inspiration for future designs I might go with.
I really dig the "One big room centered on the fire" style for the bulk of the build and I think I could make quite a few renditions that had more utility INSIDE the house (instead of tossed outside) and more fancy aesthetics tossed in- some frivolous towers to walk up and what not.
Anyways thanks for glancing at my mess I used to beat the game lol
I suppose for reference to myself in the future, I used a few mods mostly for QOL in my first full playthrough here.
Some mods I ended up removing really early on because I added them under the assumption I'd prefer them
Those being some automated feeding for taming, and a death tweaks mod that I adjusted the settings to be 'keep inventory' (after accidentally wiping my stats thanks to that mods default 25% of skills death penalty lol) because my first impression of the game was "THIS SUCKS, THE BLACK FOREST DOES *NOT* HAVE TIN (I was illiterate and immediately glossed over the 'along the ocean's edge' line- you are literally directed and I was stuck thinking it was only in the forest proper) SO I CAN'T PROGRESS AND I KEEP DEATH LOOPING OUT OF BOREDOM BECAUSE I GO IN, WANDER AIMLESSLY FOR 30 MINUTES IN THE BF, AND DIE AFTER MY FOOD RUNS OUT, GAME BAD (not true! Me bad. lol)".
Those mods were removed around the beginning of Swamp as I realized I didn't really care about taming to begin with (I didn't use it, just full on lol) and I realized I didn't mind the default death penalties for one- I ACCIDENTALLY exploited by taking like 4 iron ore with me after dying and I DID NOT want to skip portal progression by abusing keep inventory to 'transport' stuff for two- and I realized that I wasn't really going to die too much anyway, I had just been given a poor impression due to playing the start incorrectly.
Basically I realized the game didn't need that band-aid, so I removed it.
which I edited the configs for pretty much all of them quite a bit for my taste.
Smart storage allows me to quick stack my items into my chests by just attempting to quick transfer each item to any chest- it recognizes matches and puts it in the correct chest if there is space.
Made the range like 30m I think, after beating Fader I changed some settings and now I have it at 50.
Craftyboxes allows me to craft from nearby containers at benches, I used 75m (will make sense shortly). 75m was to match my base size, though technically if I built my base 'weird' and put a second workbench on one extreme and my chests on the other it wouldn't reach but after toying with "150m" that's just not necessary, 75 is plenty and a half, I usually centralize my crafting and storage anyway.
Area repair was for peace of mind because I hate the thought of there being 1 floor piece somewhere that's water damaged and I can't find it lol 75m range to cover my base.
Workbench tweaks was because I found it really silly that my first ever base in my past world took like 3 or more workbenches just to cover a 'medium' base. Increased the base size of a workbench (the area you can build within) to 75m, as well as the workbench "spawn protection" to match which for the base itself isn't something you'd notice thanks to other vanilla objects providing 20m on their own all over the place- but did technically mean if I built a portal in the wild I effectively sprinkled like 10 campfires around my 'temporary base' which IS something to consider, as minimal an impact as it had since spawn protection isn't "kill all enemies in 75m" and you can literally accomplish the same thing by sprinkling campfires if you actually wanted this effect permanently instead of temporarily (since I'd destroy my bench when I was done lol)
Too much ramble. 75m for a base feels really good.
Plant Everything straight up can be turned off, I didn't use this enough to matter at all lol
I like the idea of planting berries and what not, but the payoff never really came and gathering still filled my chests just fine. I do like that you can plant decorative stuff though! Truly didn't impact my playthrough at all.
Zen Combat is the big one- it has a ton of options!... And I turned almost all of them off lol
I had the following things turned on and everything else vanilla etc or off:
Auto equip last shield when equipping weapon (Convenient and I like this a lot, just saves you a button press)
Block Charges (A tower shield 'buff', I NEVER used a tower shield my entire playthrough lmao, this gives them a pseudo parry if you turtle up for a handful of blocks, never did it.)
Reliable Block for Tower Shields (A tower shield buff that makes it so if your stagger is broken on a block you still get the block armor for that hit specifically if you use a tower shield- again- I didn't use one once lol)
Add a dodge button (THE ENTIRE REASON I ADDED THIS MOD, THIS IS GOOD LOL)
Disable range "parry staggers" (I thought it was silly that you can parry an arrow or rock and the enemy staggers- you can still parry it obvs but they don't stagger)
Nerfed Incoming And Outgoing Knockback Across The Board (Used the default mod settings for this as this is an intended effect of the mod- I vastly preferred the feeling after trying with and without in my first hours of gameplay- parrying something and the PARRY sending them 30 ft forward felt TERRIBLE In My Opinion lol)
The ability to control mount actions (Lets you attack with the mount or whatever- I tamed 1 lox and pressed the buttons next to my base, I never fought anything or used mounts so pretty pointless for my playthrough)
Spear pickup ownership (A multiplayer focused mod that prevents others from getting your spears- I never used spears a single time this entire playthrough so even ignoring the MP aspect I didn't get to make use of this)
generally my modlist was "I want to speed up storage a bit because this is the umpteenth craft survival I've played" "I want local storage crafting" "I want to make a base without placing 30 workbenches" "I want a dodge button"
and odds and ends as mentioned, most of which I didn't use and probably wouldn't keep in the modlist.
Exacts (I think this code includes config alterations?) here.
019ec3f4-72bc-559f-617f-cbd27b937315
jacobvanloon
gummygunk
blakekathryn
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner