It was time I built myself a base of operations in Valheim. The shack I currently live out is no longer doing it and I’m shocked it did not fall over during the attack on it. I am also not sure this place will be anything close to my final base so I’m building it with that in mind as well.
Having a base of operations out of the meadows means you for the most part have a peaceful place to gather very early on resources. Since for the moment, I’ll need a lot of wood for the structure that works out. Beyond this, I plan to build a bunch of smaller forward bases. Till I perhaps one day find a final location for something rather unreasonable and large.
The first order of business was just to try and make the ground a bit more level. It’s been ages since I’ve used the hoe in Valheim. As I recall it will not make everything true level. It will just make it a lot better to build on. If you want it to be more level you have to put more effort in yourself to raise sections using rock and then mining them out to the correct layer you want.
At least for now, it will get most things good enough. I decided to start leveling out the back of my old place where I had a smelter and now even a kiln. While this place feels like it will be on a bit of a hill that just means one side of my base will have some natural protection keeping things away from it with how steep the terrain will be.
You can see how it gets things flat but there is a dip. I even had some rocks on me which it did not seem to use to automatically try and make it all more level. At the very least it did a decent job at flatting stuff.
For the most part, I was just looking to make a rough outline before I would start laying down some building blocks. I then could work on leveling things further as I went. I felt this was almost to the point I needed to start doing that.
I also took my cart out and chopped down a decent portion of the level forest. Wood is just one of those things I feel you never have enough of anyways. Even more so since I’ll be using it in the kilns The long-term goal is to have quite a few kilns set up with smelters. That will however require a lot more dungeon grinding to cores for.
Thankfully from all the mining I did, I was also bringing back any rocks with the remaining weight I could carry. I ended up using all the rock I had raising things on the one side. I did not have plans to make this place massive but it more than needed to be big enough to hold quite a lot of stuff so I would not need to expand it even further at some point.
It was finally time to lay down the flooring. This was truly the part where I had to decide just how big it was going to be. There were also other things I had to keep in mind such as the bigger it becomes the more issues I’ll have with trying to roof the place.
While some days I worked on the house from dawn to dusk or even later if I did not need enough light to see what I was working on. Other times I’d just run off into the Black Forest. I wanted to try and keep the smelter going some of the time. I had an insane amount of mining trips to make anyways.
I ended up making the base floor two walls high. I wanted to give the inside of this place a feeling that it was massive with some taller ceilings. While doing this would create some issues with building the ceiling I have a little trick for dealing with that anyways. So I was not that stressed out about it. It would just require a little thinking once was to that part of the build.
I did try and put on the roof without having to do anything extra. As expected as soon as I placed the third row of roofing they collapsed. At least I was getting my crafting supplies back from trying my luck.
I rather knew going into this I would end up having more of a barn look since a large portion of the roofing would be flat. I also would not be finishing in full the roof right away.
I put down some pillars up to the last row that was supported before the roof was starting to collapse inward. I then put some flooring across it. Now the flooring itself will not stop the rain and it will start to weather quite badly. This was however just a temporary fix and would give the inside look I wanted to have.
The next step was working out where I was going to sleep and putting in a fire. Sure, it would be nice to put the fire right in the house somewhere in the middle. That would not work out unless I was fine with the whole building filling up with smoke. This is an issue I have sometimes with my current shack.
Instead, I put a hole in the wall and built this little offshoot. The fire then would have a place to go. There would also be some roofing over it to protect the fire from any rain. It’s not the best solution ever but it's more than good enough for me.
Shortly after this, it started to rain. It was somewhat funny despite there looking like this place had a roof seeing rain on the inside. Since it was just flooring for most of it I was not even getting the proper indoor bonus either.
Before I could even address that issue I had another raid on my place. Thankfully just the forest is moving. This time around I had upgraded gear and a proper weapon. They did not stand a chance. I barely needed to kite anything around.
My biggest issue was since I was mostly working on the new house I was not keeping up eating right. So I had just the base health when this all went down. Thankfully I had three different meats on me and was able to quickly with the resting bonus get my health up far enough to not deal with any deaths this time around. I need to stop being lazy and allowing myself to be in such a situation in the future. I just prefer to not feel like I’m wasting food all the time if I don’t right then need lots of health for something I’m about to go do.
Since it was nighttime anyways I invested in resources to increase the comfort level around my sleeping area. I put in two banners, a chair, a table, a chest, and some stacks of coins, and mounted some trophies I had. This will increase how long I have my rest bonus every day and help me recover health quicker as well. If I want it higher than this there are some rather specific items I need to acquire that I’m not at the stage of the game yet to get if I recall.
Next up I needed to fix my issues with roofing. I built some steps up the side and had to jump from the ladder onto the slant onto the flat part were the flooring is. If I failed to do it fast enough I would roll down the side of the roof and have to make another attempt. From there I just put down some flat roofing in rows. Nothing fancy but it got the job done.
There then came the part of ripping down my old shack. I wanted my crafting ingredients back from the crafting stations I had within them. It was also nice to get some fat stacks of wood back as well. Thankfully it’s quite easy and quick to delete a single building wall or anything else. So I made quick work on this task.
Then I was back to working on leveling the outside of the building yet again. I wanted to put a fence on at least three sides of it for now. The backyard where the old shack was is going to be an outdoor area. For now, I left it open as I’m unsure how much space I want back there.
Over time I started to fill the inside with what you needed to increase the different crafting station levels. I needed them to increase my bow, armor, tools, and weapons levels. I spent far too much time out mining copper and tin to make it happen. I however feel it will be worth it for the next boss fight.
Final Thoughts
While this was a task I kept putting off doing for quite some time. It also took many more in-game days than I was expecting. I’m at least glad I took the time to do so and I now have a place that feels like I have enough room for lots of storage, a crafting area, and a proper bed area as well among other things as I expand the inside over time.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Valheim.
