Salem

My question is, if there's any penalty in setting up residence underground in a mine? As I'm very new to the smelting operation I'm sure there are things about a mine that I should know.

I noticed that there *seem* to be unlimited space looking at the minimap (if you mine a bit), and that I could carry heavy objects down into a mine. Theoretically I could build a series of corridor and rooms down there. A mine also strike me as very defensible and easy to 3x wall above ground, it seems to make an excellent item vault.

Beyond not being able to build a stove, are there any downside to living down in a mine? I'll be testing item decay in a bit too and see if I can keep a butcher room .

I would be surprised if you can build tilled fields in a mine and wonder about other, non-liftable structures. It would be worthwhile spending the black bile to attempt to put down the sign for each structure to see which ones you can actually build. Unless most structures can be built down there, it might be better to treat it as a vault and build your compound around it.

Also, I wouldn't put it past our developers to introduce cave-ins or other nasty surprises as the game develops.

You can build a lot in mines. However, there's a risk that at some point some stuff will be forbidden and any built of objects of that type will be nuked with some update. So I wouldn't build anything there. I just keep some containers with materials there.

I think I'll treat it like an item vault and to keep animal carcass, maybe an anvil ...etc

Probably won't do gardening and farming down there. I'm sure later updates will forbid them (if they aren't already) and the logistic of say water barrel and the like can only add time to the process.