Village Claim
A village claim is the first step to having a successful defensive base. Without one, you can be raided at any given time. Personal claims will cause braziers to fire and will require the perps to leave a scent, yes, but a village claim requires a waste claim to be placed first in order for anyone to be able to siege you. Village claims also have the ability to declaim personal claims if they have enough authority so having a p claim alone is not a good idea. A common practice is for raiders to drop a village claim beside your walls, up its authority with stone authority objects and then declaim your entire base. Once they've done this, they can raid your whole base without braziers going off.
As seen here, the raiders are preparing to build authority objects to declaim the base. Since the objects are on their village claim, the base owners are unable to do anything about it.
In order to make a village claim, you will need the skill compacts and constitutions.
Here is a photograph of a village bell that has been placed.
One advantage of a village is that even though people can walk on your claim freely, they cannot break things on it. Here is one way to defend yourself in a pinch should someone wander onto your claim while you're out in the open. By building a wall of sticks (or whatever you want, but it's better to use things that take up 1 tile and require easily accessible materials) and then building in 1 branch into each of them, you've essentially made yourself a bomb shelter from their attacks. Be sure to leave a few spaces (2+) between you and the tile they're able to stand on or they can simply use stomp and damage you inside of the box. In my example I did not leave this tile gap because I was short for time, but if you're not facing multiple people stomping from all sides you could simply run to the other side to avoid the attack. I used this trick while leaving my old village. I had gotten stuck with a crime debuff of 12 minutes when I was sighted. I quickly made this little box and then ported to Boston once the debuff had worn itself out. It is essential that you build the 1 material into your signposts or else they can simply remove the item and get inside. Tresspass is still allowed on a village claim (though it will give a crimedebuff).
The first thing that anyone should be after making their village claim is to make a stick fence all the way around the village claim so that they can work freely without people being able to wander inside and attack them. This is priority #1 because it is one of the main benefits of having a village claim in the first place.
Waste claims are also known as a Trial by Fire.
Waste claims can be destroyed 4 hours before they go live.
"Trial by Fire":
Covers 1000 x 1000 tiles.
Allows crimes of waste against personal claims and village claims under its area of influence.
Can only be built by Town members who are allowed to build Authority Objects.
Goes active 24 hours after it has been built.
Becomes possible to destroy 20 hours after it has been built.
Drains 20 points of Village Authority per hour. (Is destroyed if the village has no authority)
Personal Claims vs. Village Claims: "Should I have both?"
Ideally, you should have a p claim the exact same size as your village claim. This is fairly costly so if you were to p claim everything you have of value and every tile that you have braziers on you would be doing fairly decently as well. The reason for the large p claim is that once the raiders have entered it, they will be on a crime debuff. You are able to freely walk on a village claim meaning that raiders would waltz right up to your p claim with no harm done to them. Another reason for this is that braziers on a personal claim do not recognize crime that's done within range on the village claim (for whatever reason). Meaning that if someone bashes a house as an example 2 tiles away from your braziers and yet the braziers are on the personal claim, whereas the house was on the village claim, the braziers would not fire. Be sure to always keep your village claims and personal claims 6+ tiles out from your final wall to avoid the use of splash damage as a tactic.
Here is an example:
As you can see, the personal claim had not been extended out 1 extra tile at this point and the wall on the outside of it had been destroyed completely with no brazier fire from on the personal claim. Had the personal claim been extended, or dropped, the braziers would have recognized the crime on the village claim and started shooting immediately.
Personal claims, along with village claims both have an "upkeep" or "authority".
These can be fed by right clicking your coin purse onto the claim stake or village bell. The bell/claim drains authority per day at a rate dependant on how much land the claim is covering. Village claims cost more than personal claims do at a daily rate in general. If you are a member of the village you can check how much authority is left by holding control and pressing "P".
You will then get a list of members in your village followed by how much upkeep is left in the bell.
Personal claims are similar, however you can only check how much upkeep is left if you are the claim owner. Anyone can pay the stake though to raise the upkeep again.
It is worth it to note that while under the influence of a waste claim, you will be unable to extend your claims. So it is best to be prepared for this and to have your claims at "defensive size" long before you are raided.
Splash Damage
Splash Damage was recently added a few updates ago and it has been the main reason for people to have had to rebuild their old bases from scratch ever since. The idea of splash damage is that when you bash one wall tile down, the tiles around it will also take damage. Walls of equal or lesser tier will take splash damage when a wall tile is destroyed. Because of this, it is best to put your weakest walls in the front and to build stronger tiers as you move inward. Splash damage can span at a max of about 6 tiles. A good idea would be to place your walls like so (Going from the centre of your base working out):
Braziers > plank wall > stone wall > board fence > treewall > stick fence > 6 tile gap > repeat
This will provide you with the best "bang for your buck" when it comes to individual wall tiles needed to bash inside. A very good idea when placing your walls is to leave a 1x1 gap between your brazier rows and your plank wall. This is so that when the newest wall tile is added, you're able to put it in those gaps to have even greater defense in the future.
Here are some examples of out-dated bases and their splash damages:
As you can see, by stacking walls of the same type, it is essentially adding no extra defense. In the case of splash damage, less is more.
Treewalls
Treewalls are probably my favorite form of defense by far. The idea is that you surround your entire base/braziers with trees. This makes raiding a total pain in the ***** for people to get inside. Unlike walls, trees give no splash damage when chopped down and they take ages to chop down. Not to mention, once you've cut down the tree you'll then need to bash the stump that was left in its place. In order to get the best results per load of trees, you will want to take a look at what modifies tree sprouting success.
Treeplanting
Learn Forestry. Strike cuttings from trees. Plant cuttings in pots. Watch them grow, or watch them wither. Plant trees from sprouts by carrying the pot and Right-Clicking the ground where you wish to plant the tree. Trees take about one RL week to grow up.
• Frontier & Wilderness and Natural Philosophy determine the chance of a cutting sprouting, and are relevant when striking it from a tree.
• Stocks & Cultivars and Natural Philosophy determine the chance of a cutting sprouting, and are relevant when planting it in a pot.
All trees work for treewalls, but I would encourage you to avoid using grand maple trees as 2 people can chop them at once. Here are some examples of good and bad treewalls:
Good:
Bad:
Treewalling Your Braziers
Another lovely thing that trees can be used for are making brazier pockets. By placing these pockets between your inner and outter wall in an "V" formation (The points of the letter V being where the pockets are made) you will get full brazier coverage on the raiders so that shots will still be firing long after they'd ran from your wall. More shots = more chances for critical hits
You can use as many braziers as you'd like, but I found pockets of 2 worked best as it only took 10 trees per round and you'd only need to chop 2 whenever refuelling the braziers.
This is probably the best way to defend your braziers currently available to us in the game.
How To Properly Start, Maintain and Plant a Treewall
A lot of people wonder how to be sure that their treewalls are planted in the proper position, and how to get their operation set up. It is fairly easy, when planting your treewall it is best to use the grid function on Ender's Client. By holding control and pressing the "L" key you will bring up a menu that allows you to drag the tiles you'd like highlighted with your mouse. This is good for telling if the ground is level, and for knowing where the centre of the tile is. After dragging the area that you want, click the grab button in the box that game up to secure the tiles selected. From there you simply click roughly in the centre of the tile (the slash through it is your indicator) and select plant.
Enders Grid Function
As for getting setup, here are some of my tree plantations. Basically, the more pots you have growing at once, the faster you will be getting your treewall up. So there's no such thing as having too many tree pots. Another good thing about treewalls is that purity of the tree does not matter at all. You can use junk water, humus and pots making replanting quick and easy.
An Example of a Small Operation:
An Example of a Larger Operation:
The Progress of an Active Tree Farm:
Another fun thing to do if you'd like to give up a bit of defense is to make a treewall and then cut all of the trees down to leave the stumps. You can use the trees for your own personal use while at the same time gaining extra defense and access to many old stumps for snake skull spawns.
Brazier Placement
Brazier placement is fairly important when it comes to where the attackers will enter your base. If you do not have uniform coverage on all sides of your base, the raiders will simply take the side with the smallest amount of defenses to break inside of your base. It is crucial that you keep your brazier coverage consistent. Some popular ways to place your braziers are to place 1 brazier every 2 tiles, a brazier every 3 tiles (as seen in my first base) or to place them in groups of 2. (I encourage groups of 2 because you can then wall them in with gates, or treewall them in.
An example of 2 bazier cluster placement:
Making a full line of braziers is not encouraged because it means that for them to get in, one of your braziers will have to be completely destroyed which is a loss to you. It's best to leave a 1x1 space every few braziers.
Best idea is to treewall your braziers, 2nd best is to wall and gate them with the best wall type available to you. If you do not enclose your braziers, raiders can simply rush in and bash them down to 50% (the dmg they stop firing at) and then run back out. Rinse and repeat until there's no braziers left firing.
Another way to place your braziers is within your own walls, though this is harder now with splash damage implemented. The idea is to build 1 wall and then bash every couple of wall tiles to place a brazier in the centre. You then build 2 other walls around it to protect them. This is not exactly encouraged anymore due to splash damage.
Basically, the more braziers you can cram into a space the better off you will be, but you must also think about how you will keep them safe from raiders bashing them easily. Again, less is sometimes more.
Base Design
When considering a base design you will want to consider a few things:
-Will my brazier coverage be uniform
-Will I be able to protect the base from all sides easily in the event of an attack
-Will I have any sides that are weaker than others
Once you've considered these things, it will be easier for you to decide on a base's shape. A square or rectangle is easiest for you to get perfect uniformity. When you start adding segments randomly and not keeping up with the general base design, you will be giving up on some defense. Personally, I would go with the square design in nearly all cases. From there you can continue the wall alteration pattern described earlier in this guide in an endless loop.
Another interesting design is more of a pyramid design. 2 pyramids back to back to make a diamond shape. This shape can be achieved by making a series of rectangles that get smaller in size with each rectangle added.
It would look something like this:
Braziers can then be placed all along the inside of the walls. With this formation, braziers will be firing from many different angles meaning you will get more bang for you buck. You do not need to make completely enclosed rectacles, but the illustration is just to show you how the shape is made.
Defending Your Base
This can vary depending on your setup. If you are not in the position to fight back (hermits, new players, etc) it is best to go the defensive route.
First, you will need to make 4 alt characters that have an inventory of wall-repairing materials. Stone, flint, granite, boards, etc. These alts will be used to log in once the raiders are a safe distance away for you to repair and rebuild your wall. Once the deed has been done, log out. Watch from an alt in the centre of your village so that you will know when it is safe to log in yet again/know where the raiders currently are. It is a very good idea to keep material reserves stored in the centre of you village. I suggest making 2 windmill signposts. Fill one with stone/dross and the other with flint/granite for reparing your walls quickly as these resources will come in handy mid-raid.
Another tactic is alt abuse. Some people have issues with this tactic but it is one that does work.
Alt bodies can not be picked up or moved when killed and if they are KO'd on a personal claim instead of in combat, only people with claim rights are able to send the player home. This means that by using alt bodies you are able to protect your base for a little while longer.
Alt blocking:
By logging out alternate characters against your walls, you are able to log on and run in behind the raiders. If they are currently bashing your walls, they will be taking brazier fire. If you are successful in blocking their only way out, they can be KO'd on your claim. Once they've been KO'd you have 24 hours where you will be able to murder the raider. Should you feel that murdering is too harsh, or that it will only make them come back yet again, you are now in a position to barter with your attackers. Your base for his life.
Super Uber Alt Blocking:
This takes some real effort and planning on your part, but it can be used as a solo method of defense. You are going to need accounts. Lots and lots of accounts. Since the game is now in open beta you are able to get new game accounts freely which is nice and makes this a little easier to accomplish. First, plot out your inner wall's size. Say, 10x10. Before you built anything, label each tile with a corresponding name or number. I'd suggest names like, N1-9, S1-9, W1-9, and E1-9 with NW, SW, NE, SE, etc for the corners.
These names represent the wall direction, and the tile number that the alt will be standing on. Name your alts according to the tile that they are going to be standing on. Get them into position, and then log out. You are now free to build your wall. Should the wall tile ever be bashed in by a raider, you can now simply log onto your alt with the corresponding bashed tile and your alt will log in right there the hole is. This is the ultimate alt block because regardless of what tile is bashed, you can instantly respond. Should they try to bash out it's no problem at all. Just note the tile they're attempting to break and log in the other alt the second the walltile goes down. GG raiders.
Diagram:
Some Added Tips I've Given Taken From Another Thread on Base Defense:
If you want to be a real ***** to raid, start digging clay and fill your base with kilns.
Kilns have a very high amount of HP and will be a real pain for them to run around in your base if they're put all over.
Your best strategy once you know that they'll be able to get in and you can't fight back by yourself is to make it as big of a pain to maneuver while inside of your base as possible. This will mean that they can't destroy as much, or loot as efficiently. On top of this you might get lucky and they'll get stuck on an object's hitbox and be KO'd by your braziers.
Another thing, signposts. Signpost every single tile that doesn't have anything on it already. Bundles of sticks for fires work fine, just get a whole bag of sticks from a tree and build in 1 branch into each signpost. They'll have to destroy every post to move anywhere
If you know your base is going down for sure, the best course of action is to get another account and make alt characters named "Storage1" "Storage2" etc and fill them with all of your belongings. In the end the raiders will be going into the empty base. Another fun tactic to use after this is to lock all of your containers. They'll have to break them to find out what's inside and if they're all empty it's a massive waste of time for them.
colesie wrote:Darkside wrote:Interesting tips colesie. About the kilns - why dont people create kiln walls if they are tough to knock out?
Also do signs have any toughness to them depending on what they are and how complete they are? For example if you placed stone hedge signs and filled them with just one stone, are they harder to destroy than a wood pile sign with 1 branch? And does it make a difference if the 1 ingredient is "built" in or just placed in the sign ?
Kilns can be bashed by more than one person, which is why they're not ideal for walls, also there's a small unavoidable gap between them. You could put trees out front of the gap so they can either bash the kiln or the tree which would work out a little better.
If they're not built into the signpost they can just take out the item and then drop them to remove the sign. If it's built in they have to destroy it. As for time it takes, from my haven experience when you bash a sign with a lot of items in it, it will slowly remove built in items but not all at once. So I'd assume a 400/400 stone WM sign would take longer in Salem, yes.
There are a few other ways to defend your base that I have not mentioned in this guide but I am not going to be discussing them just yet because I personally feel like they break the game.
So there you have it! Will update if I've missed anything. Enjoy!
