Overview
This is a work in progress..Dissatisfied with current guides, especially written, I thought I’d share my knowledge on building in CE. Please put additional tips, questions or corrections in comments. I’ll be adding to/updating this regularly.Why listen to me: I have 700+ hours on PvP servers and I love to build. On my main server I just hit level 50 and my clan has a number of bases in epic locations. My clan’s main base is the entire black bridge in the north, just south of the hourglass oasis. Grab this spot if you can.I have had many bases completely destroyed due to (1) ignorance during first 25 hours (2) focus on design (looks) over location/survivability during first 100 hrs (3) missed vulnerability to bugs and exploits (ongoing). But I’m never discouraged (for too long) as failure is the best way to learn and improve.
Defending Against Glitch Raiding
As most of us know playing on official servers, there is an invasion of asian players with high pings using vertical surface (doors, walls) glitching to get inside our bases. They are able to do this primarily because of their very high pings and likely playing on very low end computers. The lag between when they log in and when models and, more importantly, clip boxes load allows them to eventually glitch through vertical surfaces by logging in, out and back in repeatidly until they glitch through.
A fellow player, who says he plays on a server completely overrun by the asian invastion, has posted a series of videos with his observations on how they are getting into oiur bases without causing external damage and some ideas on how to possibly defend against their attacks. Keep in mind that I have not confirmed this information, though most of it fits with other players’ observations:
[link]TLDR (summary of videos):
How they do it
*their high ping allows them to glitch through vertical surfaces (see above) (EDIT: Hotfix 28.04.2017 patch notes say this has been fixed.}
*there are still spots on map where you can fall through map into water that is under everything. They then swim to the mountain, etc you are on and work there way up and into your base if possible. They can only get directly into your base this way if part of the mountain, ruin, etc sticks into your internal base space. (EDIT: 4/21/2017 patch notes say this is no longer possible.]
Image: this rock and bare floor inside base could possibly allow a glitcher to get in.
Possible Ways to Prevent It
(1) don’t allow any part of the world to stick into your base, and don’t use the ground as your floor.
(2) as with the standard meta against legitimate raiding, you want to buiild your base on a high mesa, with as flat a top as possible, and with smooth sides. The addition to help prevent glitch raiding is to cover the entire horizontal surface with foundations, preferbly T2/T3. This will prevent them from being able to climb up into your base, as they won’t be able to get throuigh foundations.
(3) this isn’t really an anti glitch defense, but it is a good idea to help revent raiders getting in from stacking (devs have said stacking is a legitimate way to raid): once foundations are down, put at least one layer of ceiling tiles around the perimeter, preferably more.
(4) build the internal spaces of your base by starting with colums on top of the foundations. This way, if they somehow glitch through foundation, the space between foundation and floor will keep them from going further up. Also, this adds additional areas where you can use and remove stairs.
(5) when in doubt use more foundations: the author of this video doesn’t think it is possible to gitch through a foundation. Keep in mind that foundations do cause an exhorbitant amount of lag compared to other building pieces.
My Experimental Glitch “Proof” Base”
Working on this base following the suggestions above. Will update this section after the next asian invasion to let you know if it worked.
Basics of Building
FUNDAMENTALS
Three levels of building materials:
Tier 1 Mats (T1M) – accessible during first 10 levels. Called Sandstone. Made from stone and wood. Can be destroyed by steel weapons/tools, hyenas, crocs, rhinos and higher.
Tier 2 Mats (T2M) – accessible during late teens and 20s. Made from brick (stone in forge), iron reinforcement (iron in blacksmith bench, SLOW) and shaped wood (wood in carpenter station). Can be destroyed by explosive jars, elephants, rocknose kings, dragons and avatars
Tier 3 Mats (T3M) – accessible during late 20s and 30s. Endgame mats. Very time consuming to produce. Google for recipes. Can be destroyed by (tons of) explosive jars, dragons, elephants, Rocknose Kings and avatars
Placeables
T0P – campfire, bedroll, torches, palisades and some decorations. Can be destroyed by stone and some even by fists.
T1P – shrines, furnace, blacksmith, carpenter, tannery, bonfire, wood box, cauldron , armory, most decorations. Destroyed by same as T1M.
T2P – lesser wheel of pain, black box. Destroyed by same as T2M.
T3P – Wheel of Pain, Greater Wheel of Pain, Vault. Can only be destroyed by explosive jars and avatars. In case of Vault, it would take 1,500 to 2,000 jars.
Note – no matter what tier a placeable is, if its foundation is destroyed, it will be destroyed. Goes for mats too.
Tools:
Knife – hit dead animals for most hide by far. Gives nothing else. Gives nothing at all from spiders or Rocknose.
Weapons – most can be used to harvest anything. But low yield for durability lost. I do use my stone or iron sword to harvest plant fiber. Hit E then swing and repeat.
Tiers – higher quality mats (steel > iron > stone) yield higher amounts up to 11x
BUILDING BASICS
Pieces and How They Interact
Foundation/Pilar/Fence Foundation – starting points. Using these starting pieces correctly is key to stability (see below). Foundations: Can place on ground and build up with more foundations, walls, doorways, etc. Place on rock walls & sides of ruins and then build up or out. Pilars: you build up from ground like a foundation, but you can also build down from ceiling, but you have to trick the game. Build a stack of pilars up from floor until one reaches ceiling. Destroy all but pilar in ceiling. You can attach a floor tile to this celing and build from there. Fence Foundation: – not just for placing fence pieces on. You can use these pretty much like foundations on the ground. You can put then flush on ground and they look like railroad track. You can then attach walls, doors, and gateways to them (gotta check on roof pieces). For gateways these are useful, because when you attach a gateway to a foundation it attaches to center of foundation and throws off alignment with other pieces, like walls, or just looks weird. With fence foundations you can make things look cleaner. You can also raise foundations a good bit above ground to where they are almsot half as high as a wall.
Wall/doorway/window wall – attach vertically to foundation, column (?), stable roof tile or another stable wall/etc. (fence tops act like these, except nothing can be attached on top of them).
Roof (floor) Tile – attach horizontally to foundation, pilar, stable walls/floors/etc.
Stairs – attach at top or bottom to foundations, other stairs, roofs or walls
Triangular pieces, angled roofs, etc – mostly decorative and I haven’t played around with much
Tips for Placing:
(1) Mouse Wheel – rotates foundations and stairs for proper placement. Rotates walls/other vertical panels along Z axis for (cosmetic only) choice of visible texture. Rotates roof tile along X/Y axes for cosmetic appearance only. Rotates placeables along X/Y axes for proper placement.
(2) Shift + Mouse Wheel – moves foundation up and down along Z axis
(3) Mouse Wheel Click – aligns placeable to slope of ground. Very useful for placing bedrolls when you are out in the wild.
(4) Finagling – usually pieces snap together as they should, but not always. Assuming you are attaching something to another stable piece (see below), things should work as you expect. But sometimes you may have to look up and down with mouse, jump, go to 3rd/1st person, etc to get it to do what you want. Using mouse wheel to rotate usually will fix the “failure to place” message. Often placeables are on YOU, so move out the way. Sometimes if you, say, put a wall before the placeable or vice versa, it will work when it wouldn’t the other way. Yay for Early Access!!
(5) Upgrading – you do not need to demo sections of your base to upgrade from say T1M to T2M. If you aren’t wanting to change layout, you can just seamlessly replace a piece by putting the higher tier over the lower. Really good for when you just want to replace lower, reachable portions of base with higher tier while leaving upper sections as lower tier. Also, since T2M and T3M are so much more resource expensive than T1M, its usually a good idea to first build a new base or section with T1M, especially if you are experimenting, and then replace with higher tier mats. WARNING – I just learned this the hard way. If a placeable, say a large chest, is entirely on one foundation or floor piece it will destroy this placeable when you upgrage the foundation or floor. [EDIT: according to 4-7-2017 update notes, this issue is fixed.]
(6) Stability – as mentioned above, foundation(s) are the start of any building. Walls/other vertical tiles that start on a foundation can go up indefinitely (I think). Going out horizontal or down (?) from a foundation is limited to 4 tiles, though I think only 3 with stair sections. For example, you can build out 4 roof tiles in same direction out from foundation. Or, say roof tile, wall, wall on top of first wall, then another roof tile attached to top of 2nd wall. Basically, a tile can accept another tile going away from foundation (is stable) if it’s stability rating is 40% or more. Use repair tool to see this value. You can increase a tile’s stability by adding more structural support via more foundations, walls or columns. It’s not always clear how this works. Really just have to do trial and error.
FUN FACTS
How high can you go? I play around on a single player server, which gives me access to admin tools. For building, this means I can spawn any material I need, instantly. I have built a tower 150 stair sections high and counting. I was able to fly so high into the sky that I got bored before hitting a ceiling (if one exists). So, for all practical purposes, there is no limit to how high you can build.
Base Survivability: Location and Building Strategy
This section will be flushed out in much more detail:
Current meta is still to build a raised base, especially when you are still using T1M. Find a location where you control all sides, like a raised mesa. This means nobody can build up to it or fall into it from a nearby higher positon. Remove sufficient stair sections when you log so people can’t climb up. Remember, devs have said player stacking is legal. Nude with sufficent encumberance, stacking up to four players is possible, albeit difficult. There is a bug where stairs reappear when server restarts at daily reset or after crash. After you remove stair section(s) replace with foundation so stairs can’t reappaer.
Image: my “Pride Rock” castle base is an example of a raisd mesa base. Foundations and lowest walls are also T2M, which adds more protection. Sadly, this castle was destroyed 3/19/2017 by some duplcating exploiters using Yog avatar on yet another base.
Overhangs: given that jump exploits are one of the most common to pop up, if you can put your base under a rock, you have a big advanage. Such as cliff overhang and caves. I am lucky enough to have the best cave locaiion on my server (pics to come). My cave also protecs my base from all current avatars except maybe Set (have to test).
Image: Example of a cliff overhang safehouse. This is a very small base I did for fun.
How to Build Proper Stairs
Tired of your stairs coming out looking like an MC Escher drawing, then follow these few simple steps.
Building Up Large Permanent Structure
If we want to build up, say, this iconic spot on the Noob River, we just need a bit of planning and three basic pieces: foundations, stairs and ceilings.
Not counting farming time (used admin powers to spawn T3M), this took about 10 minutes. I used 10 foundations, 5 ceiling tiles and 30 stair sections.
Alternative to Stairs
As we all know, stairs and other building pieces sometimes come back after a server reset (scheduled or after a crash). This allows would be raiders easy access into most meta raised bases.
As an alternative, I have been experimenting with using placeables, primary shelves, to climb to elevated doors, etc. The benefit is that these objects never come back in mine or other players’ experience. Also, you can dismantle your placeable “stairs” from a distance with a bow and arrows.
Pictures to come soon.
Utility Buildings
Ninja Stairs 1.0
Requires two foundations and as many walls and stairs needed to reach the height you want. Benefits are that it (1) only requires two squares of building space (which a raid target on a mountain, etc may have not protected), (2) does not require a mountain side, etc to place foundations as you go up and (3) remove the two foundations at bottom and the evidence of you being there is gone.
Ninja stairs in action during a recent raid.
Ninja Stairs 2.0
Requires one foundation and sufficient walls and shelves to reach height you want. Benefits over Ninja Stairs 1.0: (1) only requires one square of building space and (2) slightly quicker to dismantle. Disadvantages: (1) can’t get shelves until level 35 (2) unless you have shelves or shaped wood on you, can’t make on the fly (3) pretty tricky to jump up shelves
WTF Do I Do About Trebuchets and Avatars?!
Trebuchet:
When this was in the Future of Building section, I predicted that trebuchets would be cool as hell, but have little direct affect on base building and survivability. That was because the dev blog said it would be expensive and bulky to transport. Neither of these are really true.
Trebuchet Overview
To build a trebuchet you start by crafting the Siege Foundation and Trebuceht Base at the carpenter station, which each weigh 15 lbs. Combined, these cost roughly 30 brick, 30 shaped wood, 200 wood, and 20 iron reinforcements. So, not that heavy or expensive to start. Moreover, you can aquire the Engineering (trebuchet) recipe at level 15. In short, the trebuchet is the poor man’s Avatar.
Once these first two compenents are setup, it costs another 400 wood and 26 iron reinforcements. Boulders cost 25 stone and 10 twine. And you need counterweights to increase distance. I’d say anyone over level 30 with some T2M on hand could be up and running in less than 30 minutes.
It does take 3 Boulders or so to destroy a T1M wall and significantly more for T2M/T3M, but there is some splash damage. A more advance amunition can be crafted using two Explosive Jars. This will take out a T3M wall with 2 direct hits. After every 3rd launch you have to spend a good bit of wood and a handful of iron reinforcements to repair trebuchet or it will brake.
It is slow going for one person, but you could certainly level an elevated T1M base in a couple hours in the wee hours of the night. A group of 3 or more people can keep things flowing and do it much quicker.
Trebuchet-proof Base
The most effective location to prevent a trebuchet attack is inside a cave or an enclosed room of a ruined building. As there are few of these locations in the Exiled Lands, this option is not available to most players.
A much more available option is to build on a raised location that is significantly higher than anything around it (think The Lonely Mountain). This is not 100% affective as an enemy can build a tall tower on which to place a trebuchet.
Avatars
While some locations, like caves and enclosed rooms in ruined buildings, offer some protection against Avatars, there is nothing that is Avatar-proof. Gods do not care how man thralls you have or that your base is 100% T3M.
The best defense is to have mutliple bases and to use diplomancy: forge alliances with the large clans on your server who can use Avatars.
Ruin System
On March 23rd, 2017 the devs released update 22, which included the Ruin System or, more commonly known as, the Decay System. Based on in game time the day of and day after patch, it appears they are still working out the kinks. Currently only structures and some placeables decay, such as shrines. Eventually everything, including the lowly bedroll will decay.
Once the Ruin System is “finalized,” I will update this section. The jist of the decay system is that if you are claiming land you need to be using it and/or paying upkeep. A big thing this is combating is people peppering map with single foundations in impossible to reach (until siege towers) or invisable places, but never doing anything with the land. Also, it is to remove abandoned structures, such as those that lliter the southern “noob” river.
In short, the more connected pieces you place and the more time you spend on or near a structure increases the decay time. Some pieces seem to have a bigger effect, such as a doorway and door. And a complete building with walls, door and roof seems to also get a bonus. Again, don’t know the specifics beyond a couple: a single foundation last 1.5 hours, each additional adds 1.5 hours to whole. Adding doors, walls and completing structures seems to give additional bonus.
As an example, my clanmate and I played all day yesterday to catch up after the big wipe. He picked a spot near the hourglass oasis near center of map and I managed to claim the entire black ruined bridge southeast of there. After I put down a ton of foundations to stake my claim at bridge, i spent rest of day helping clanmate. Fast forward to today, all of my single foundations were gone and I am slowly putting in doorways, walls, etc along bridge (which is huge) to stay ahead of decay. On the other hand, since we built a good bit of connected stuff and spent lots of time at clanmates base, it now has over 200 hours before it decays.
The Future of Building
Siege Towers:
Image Source: [link] Not from game or concept art.
Not discussed much, but devs mentioned that they will be adding the ability to build siege towers. Basically you will have movable foundations that you wil be able to build anything on and move into enemy territory. While the mechanics are completely unknown, this means that theoreteically, no base will be unreachable.