Why does your base SUCK?

[Frain Breeze]

Regardless of how much effort you put into building, you're pretty much guaranteed to find some issues with your base once you have it all built. Maybe the layout is inconvenient. Maybe you badly underestimated your storage needs, and have to keep sticking additional chests in stupid places. Or maybe it's just a butt-ugly dirt tower because you didn't feel like doing something elaborate. What's wrong with yours?


For me, my usual issue is that I make a huge, elaborate fortress with little thought as to how quickly I can get around. There's no flow, there's lots of dead-ends, and sometimes I have to make huge back-and-forth trips among distant storage rooms, NPC homes, and crafting stations. Goblin wizards are pain to eliminate. Not to mention the nightmare something like Mothron might be later in the game.

I've also learned to pay close attention to the original spawn point's location. On one world, logging in with a new character dropped you right into a lava moat. On another world, the spawn point was in a wall so you'd immediately bust in like Kool-Aid Man, and then have to rebuild whatever was in that room. Oh yeah.

 

[Tsuki]

"I'm going to build a huge, elaborate armory / warehouse to store all of my items, and never have to throw anything away because it'll be so organized, and ergonomic, and efficient!"

And then everything I get from mining expeditions and battles ends up in 5 chests right inside my front door, and I never feel like categorizing anything, but now I have this ugly wide open space with nothing in it, built of basic wood, without a single chest.

 

[General Milky]

I have 2 main problems with any building I make.

The first is being incapable of making it right off the bat. Maybe I want gold bricks, maybe I need to be in hardmode to get flesh blocks. Maybe I need more wood than a copper axe is worth cutting down. Whatever the case, SOMETHING puts the project til "later." This branches into two sub problems

Either A. I make a temporary, awful wooden tower to hold the NPCs until I'm ready, or B. I just start now with the intention of tearing some of it down later to make way for the ideas I had. Naturally, none of it happens. I get lazy, and my NPC tower just stays as my base, or the "holdover" design becomes the final.

The second main problem I have is never reasonably being able to make exactly what I want to make without cheating. Cheat in one stack of rainbow brick, then it opens the moral floodgates to cheating in OTHER kinds of bricks. And decorations. And statues. And then I reflect on what I've done and feel guilty and just move on to finishing Moon Lord so I can start another playthrough that is TOTALLY LEGIT and most likely to become a ty wooden tower as described above.

 

[ManaUser]

My biggest regret is that I built the main housing area right at the world spawn point, which makes dealing with invasions way harder. Also, it looks completely boring. I think I'll have to make a new base, somewhere else, and hopefully cooler.

 

[TobyJ]

I can actually build really intricate and elaborate good-looking structures; well-lit, wired, EVERYTHING... my problem is that I never fill the space. I always take it too far and build a massive- castle or something, then I never do anything with the space, or even bother to put furniture there. So it just becomes a museum of empty rooms.

Alternatively, I start a game and never get around to building that giant house, so I end up taking the TOWER route (build a ton of npc homes stacked on top of each other) and fill up my 2-room house really quickly.

 

[neoselket]

it just ends up as a wood box. i can't build worth raisins.

 

[Gotcha!]

Every time a new update rolls in it comes apparent to me that I need more and more storage space. I've taken this into account when I first build my main building, but it's never enough.
So I've been strategically replacing a wall here and there to allow more chests and mannequins, throwing out furniture to replace with chests etcetera, and relocating some stuff to npc rooms or even other buildings as a last resort. Even widened the whole building once. That was an annoying job.

The biggest headache with this update was the new statues. Had to add several new floors to my museum to fit them all.

But it all worked out fine. Here's hoping no more paintings and statues will be added to the game. x)

Spoiler

 

[Xakk]

I weaved a few sets of staircases together for a pretty braided effect. It works for players, but the guide seems to fall right through it, every day.

 

[Garish Gnome]

I either do the huge barren castle with moats, towers, a dungeon (with proper torture devices available of course), and a vault to hold everything... or I make wooden boxes stacked on top of each other.

Actually, who am I kidding... it's just wooden boxes anymore.

If defensive fortifications (aside from tiny, generally ugly AI mechanic abusing rooms) were useful I'd build castle-like structures more. I still remember getting excited for a goblin invasion "coming from the east" (they were just added if I recall) after my first huge castle was complete. I had expected to hold them off at the gate. What I didn't expect was them attacking from inside my castle as well...

"I'm going to build a huge, elaborate armory / warehouse to store all of my items, and never have to throw anything away because it'll be so organized, and ergonomic, and efficient!"

And then everything I get from mining expeditions and battles ends up in 5 chests right inside my front door, and I never feel like categorizing anything, but now I have this ugly wide open space with nothing in it, built of basic wood, without a single chest.

I do this but usually fail to even build the vault and my chests are always spread around in NPC houses, outside in the grass, and there's always at least one on a roof... It keeps me frustrated and confused which is apparently how I like it.

 

[Rohir_Santagron]

Every time a new update rolls in it comes apparent to me that I need more and more storage space. I've taken this into account when I first build my main building, but it's never enough.
So I've been strategically replacing a wall here and there to allow more chests and mannequins, throwing out furniture to replace with chests etcetera, and relocating some stuff to npc rooms or even other buildings as a last resort. Even widened the whole building once. That was an annoying job.

The biggest headache with this update was the new statues. Had to add several new floors to my museum to fit them all.

But it all worked out fine. Here's hoping no more paintings and statues will be added to the game. x)

Spoiler

Awesome base! I've always wanted to gather all the the things and display them, but I'm too lazy most of the time. If you don't mine me asking, what did you use for the layer behind the main room structures? I'm guessing your main wood is Pearlwood, but there seems to be something else outlining the blocks and 'thickening' them. It's a really nice effect, and I hope I'm not being too vague to understand.

 

[Gotcha!]

Awesome base! I've always wanted to gather all the the things and display them, but I'm too lazy most of the time. If you don't mine me asking, what did you use for the layer behind the main room structures? I'm guessing your main wood is Pearlwood, but there seems to be something else outlining the blocks and 'thickening' them. It's a really nice effect, and I hope I'm not being too vague to understand.

Thanks and yeap, it's all pearlwood. If you make sure your pearlwood walls don't connect with other types of walls then you get these neat pearlwood plinths. So you'll have to make sure no walls exist behind tiles.

 

[FairyPrincessSerenity]

Hey now. My base is actually pretty good.

It's got everything you could want in a good headquarters, plus a Pop Tart Cat.

 

[MitBoy]

I want to make my base compact, but also beautiful. At the end, it's just golden boxes.

 

[KibbleKip]

I wanted a perfect looking house for my NPC's with an attic, one that I could make windows able to open for the NPCs. Then I realized the NPCs were stupid enough to jump off from their balconies, so the windows had to stay shut. Because its 4 floors (1st floor crafting/trophies, 2nd and 3rd floor npcs and 4th floor attic) I had a huge problem going between the attic, the crafting and the NPCs, especcially now I had no entrance to the NPCs. In the end I just put some platforms in 1 end of the attic to get between them, and because it takes so long to get to them it ended up being a waste of time.

 

[Frain Breeze]

I wanted a perfect looking house for my NPC's with an attic, one that I could make windows able to open for the NPCs. Then I realized the NPCs were stupid enough to jump off from their balconies, so the windows had to stay shut. Because its 4 floors (1st floor crafting/trophies, 2nd and 3rd floor npcs and 4th floor attic) I had a huge problem going between the attic, the crafting and the NPCs, especcially now I had no entrance to the NPCs. In the end I just put some platforms in 1 end of the attic to get between them, and because it takes so long to get to them it ended up being a waste of time.

Oh god, balconies. I remember always trying to have fancy rooms with balconies for important NPCs, but then they always end up jumping off. Into the lava moat. Why?!

 

[Greenie]

Well um...

Probably the biggest problem here is having the NPCs in a separate building, since as far as convenience goes, that's not always the best idea. That one place I included in this screenshot isn't even the only NPC housing area I have, there are a few more elsewhere that I didn't include for the sake of keeping the screenshot smaller. I also included too many rooms in the main castle, so a lot of them go unused or have very little use.

 

[ManaUser]

So I'm rebuilding (due to the previous suckage mentioned above), and I thought I had enough gold chests to do all my storage in that... but I don't! So now I'll either have mismatched chests (the horror!) or else I'll have to figure out something craftable that looks halfway nice and unpack and repack everything, ugh.

 

[Xylia]

I came up with a real nice system that has almost no flaws at all, and I exploit the ever loving *beeeep* out of it every playthrough.

The ONLY flaw I think it has, is that I already did it numerous times lol.

Spoiler: screenshot

Basically the way this system works is this:

The room where the Dryad stands is where the Potions and Ingredients to make Potions go. Ivy Chest is ingredients, Glass Chest is potions. It is also barely in range for Auto-Stack to Nearby Chests to reach IIRC. If not, you can just raise it up a little. There should be some water in that hole next to the ivy chest, but I just didn't do it yet in that screenshot for making bottled water.

To the right, you'll see a long row of Brown chests. These are where crafting materials go. These, too, can be Quick Stacked with ease. Just running across here clicking the Quick Stack button makes sure everything goes where it should until/unless you get something new.

The Gold Chests are where weapons and armor get stored, and the Ice Chests are where biome blocks get stored. They're the only thing you can't Quick Stack from the entrance, but you merely need to drop down and QS them there (it takes like 5 seconds).

The housing for NPCs is above me in this screenshot, and I put frequent NPCs like the Goblin right near the entrance, and NPCs I almost never touch in the further away rooms. Once you get this set up, it is surprisingly efficient and fast to do everything you need to do within 20 seconds or less after you return from a trip.

It isn't really set up for fighting off invasions, but then I usually make an area just off-screen for that, where mobs will still spawn but NPCs are in practically zero danger.

EDIT: You can see it on the minimap but I also have an area for growing all of the plants to the left. The seeds are kept in a chest there, and once I harvest, I run over here and dump em in the Ivy Chest in this screenshot.

 

[Turjan]

The main problem with my base is that I'm a hoarder. No matter how many chests I have, they are always full, and all my attempts at sorting stuff ultimately fail when yet another chest got filled up and I have to get rid of more things from my full inventory.

Spoiler: screenshot

The next issue is that it is built at the spawn point. Goblin invasions are a pain this way. I finally had to reset my spawn point to somewhere outside of the base so I don't have to hunt down those teleporting goblins in the rooms.

A further issue is that it ended up being a box. This is more a general game problem. Enemies spawn in parts of a base that are off-screen. The result is that the base has basically to fit on one screen to avoid that. All my attempts at fancying the base up just led to difficulties during invasions, so in the end, a box design it became.

Anyway, it's mine and it somehow works. You can still see the different building stages, starting with the humble wood box in the center. I think I wanted to move lots of times, but I guess I'm too lazy.

 

[Tamorr]

I don't have much trouble building, even with the base materials in the game; that is at the beginning that I seem to restart quite often. I think maybe the flaw lies in not finishing what I have in mind in some instances, and not having the materials right away to get the overall look I want.

Then again I usually go back through and remodel bits and pieces of my small structures. I haven't built anything all that big, unless my Pagoda like structure counts; which by the way is suppose to be an art gallery where I put most my painting or other things.

Maybe that is a flaw in itself, for the fact I don't usually build big. It is all small that gets added onto overtime that ends up being big. So possibly just the way I build in the moment or a piece at a time to sometimes look like that famous house here that someone built for years with many odd twists and turns; like doors leading to no where. Can't remember the name of the house, but that is sometimes what it reminds me of. Other than that if anyone has seen the movie Labyrinth then you may know the twists and turns I am talking about.

But usually I am satisfied, until I remodel again when I feel like it; or extend this or that altering what it looked like before.

So glad you can get hay/straw in the beginning once a merchant arrives, so I don't have to make complete wooden housing. I like using more than one type of block...