Crock Pots
I tend to plop down 4 crocks in the closest possible square configuration, then add a fridge or two in the middle. 6 crocks in a circle is better with more people, but it's harder to get right and you can only reach them all from a single fridge (maybe a 2nd fridge if you're more clever than I am). On a large server, Warly can set up a second, bigger and better cooking spot on his own.
I often see servers where crock pots and fridges are placed hapazardly, so you have to move the food into your inventory before cooking it. This takes better planning on the part of the cook and it's easier to let stuff rot in your inventory when you get interrupted.
Is there another way to do it? When I put down 4 crocks and a fridge, I still see players putting all the food in their inventory and walking around the outside of the crocks to put it in. Makes me scratch my head!
Light and Heat Efficiency
I tend to cram everything together as tightly as possible around a fire pit. Clockwise might go:
- Alchemy Engine (with a line of chests tangent to the outside of it so you can craft out of the first 3 chests)
- 4 crock pots (2 touching fire pit) with a fridge in the middle and a birdcage off to one side
- Lightning Rod (can be hammered and replaced with a Flingomatic later)
- Optional square Garden Plot with the center of one flat side exactly 1 tile away from the fire
Here's a sample from my most recent game. The lightning rod started where the flingo is now (I like it in the center because when it lights up, it can help you aim your fuel at the fire at night - a firefly can to the same thing even better tho).
I did this on a server recently and people were very quick to tell me how wrong I was. I can imagine some good arguments for their point of view:
- I had put the garden too close, even for me. It needs a full tile between it and anything else so you can hold down SPACE with a wielded hammer to harvest giant crops.
- Fire risk is definitely a problem with close spacing. Someone even brought an extra-adorable Lavae egg to the fire pit to demonstrate this point, but I picked it up before it could hatch.
- It feels crowded when lots of people access the fridge with Chester and Beefalos and maybe the Stagehand. (I should get more comfortable with the 6-crock config).
I do it anyway because:
- A single 3-log fire illuminates the entire base. You can definitely cook and craft without a thermal stone all night and all winter and even garden the near side of the garden.
- A single flingo can cover the whole thing. If there is a fire, anyone can turn the flingo on in any season. I like that the game challenges you to build within a flingo radius, but you often can't afford the flingo yet when you're building.
- It's cheap to completely cobblestone the area early.
What is the better solution? Maybe I'm just too cheap with light/heat/cooling? Rush dragonfly and toadstool?
Location, Permanence, and Speed
Access to crock pots, a fridge, an Alchemy Engine and a Shadow Manipulator as early in the game as possible is huge. Assuming a safe distance from the nearest meteor field, sinkhole, moose goose spawn, frog pond, or mosquito pond, anything within a screen or two of the Florid Postern will do. If you need to move or make a bigger base elsewhere later, you can take down anything expensive and leave the basics as a welcome center.
I tend to throw down a fire pit and a crock or 2, maybe a chest, a fridge, lightning rod, and a couple drying racks in a few places on the map. I often walk around with all these things pre-crafted to build as needed. Common spots for at least a mini-base:
- Near MacTusk and the Moonstone, because both of those require hanging around that area.
- Near the spawn point to welcome new players and because it tends to be near world-center.
- Next to glommer or near the Pig King.
- I personally dislike the oasis in summer, but understand why people base there. It also tends to be far from any good wormholes or sinkholes, but in some worlds, it's an excellent place to base.
- The first spring/summer, I almost always make a base in the caves, usually in the mud turf just before the choke point to the area where the lichen grows by the ruins. The lone bunny huts here even have sunlight for a 2x2 garden plot, but my base doesn't necessarily center around them.
- I have made a base on a boat that plugs into a bigger base in a V-shape in the land, but it gets a little like a clown-car with more than 2 players.
Only after I find the ruins and the nearest sinkholes and have explored the outline of the surface world and maybe found lunar island and Pearl's Island do I have complete information on where the best basing spot is. Even so, Weber, Wurt, and Wicker may need separate bases.
Conclusion
There's no way to have an in-depth discussion about this stuff mid-game. I'd like suggestions on how to base better in multiplayer, given what I talked about above. I often just gather materials for other people to place, but I when I play Wickerbottom she can skip crafting stages for an even earlier Shadow Manipulator if people work together and let her build.