There was some doubt as to whether or not we really needed to go through the effort and setup a base in the mountains. So far we have managed to keep things consolidated within a single main base, using portals to get around where we need to go.
We have gotten away so far with just a few outposts here and there. A couple of them grew to the point of being something akin to a base. But we have tended to walk away from them once the local resources… copper, or tin, or scrap iron… have been exhausted.
And I probably have a pretty loose definition of a base. A building isn’t enough, nor beds. And you have to build a workbench to build anything else, so that barely counts. But insisting on there being a forge or a smelter might be too far. A base is some place you stay and work out of, so it is more than an outpost, something that gets fixed up a bit and made to look nice.
Maybe like this?
A nice room in the mountains
Granted, we never planned to get there, it just happened.
I mentioned in my past post about finding some visible silver before we killed Bonemass for the first time that we would need to go up the hill again, so I built a little hut in a safe place on the side of the mountain and put up a portal to save us the trip up.
And that worked for a while, though the location of the portal was a bit awkward. I had really planned to put it in an abandoned tower not too far away, but there were two stone golems prowling around it early on, and it is some effort to kill them.
But by the time we had Bonemass down and had the wishbones on us to find silver, I had managed to knock down both of the golems. Another one spawned before we spread out some campfires, but he managed to get stuck in a hole and now sits there getting attacked by drakes while we go about our business.
Drakes and golems don’t like each other.
Though even after we had the golem menace under control, I wasn’t sure it was worth the bother to even move the portal. Like our other expeditions, we were here for resources. And then I started finding silver. Lots of silver.
We had trolled around with the wishbones in a couple of other mountain locations and had only found one silver vein, but on this mountain, up above the Grey Pit we built, silver seemed to be much more common. And close together.
I think part of the reason we have so many huge holes in the biome now is that, for example, I found three silver veins… so far… close enough together that the reading from one would mess up the reading from another.
Three silver nodes within beeping distance of each other
So I spent more time wandering around and digging down trying to find the treasure. But, in the end, I kept on finding it because we would dig one up, then once it was cleared I would go back there to start my search for another, only to find the wishbone was still beeping at me. So I would keep digging and find another one.
The wishbone knows where to go
So eventually I decided I would just more the portal into the tower if only because it was marginally easier to get to the silver from there. So took down the portal, built a workbench in the tower, then put up the portal there.
Then I decided I wanted to shelter the portal, which meant putting up a roof. But the walls were coming apart. However, I knew we had a couple of pieces of iron down at the Grey Pit, and with those I could build a stone cutter and repair the walls.
Repairing is never enough though, so I started filling in holes and making the whole thing look a bit better. There was a ton of stone to hand… literally so… from digging up silver near the tower. It too seemed to be a nexus of resources.
The silver around the tower
[Edit: That upper right silver marker was a silver vein with another silver vein underneath it. Silver city here we come!]
Once I had it fixes up a bit, with a place to shelter, a couple of chests, and a fire, I let the crew know on Discord that the portal had been moved.
And then Brynjar got on, went to town, and I came back to find that room at the top of the post and was pretty sure we had crossed over from outpost to base.
Looking at the base from the silver trio area
It actually grew quite a bit from just the tower. But, as I said, we had a lot of stone close by to work with.
Meanwhile, there was enough silver up there that we started working on our silver mining technique. By accident we found out that if you undermine a silver node completely, it gets much easier to harvest.
A silver node not touching the ground
Then, when you actually mine part of it, after a couple whacks the whole thing collapses into silver and stone. Since it takes less time to dig through stone rather than ore, it seems like an easier way to get the whole thing done… and you have to dig out most of that stone anyway to get to the silver.
A silver and stone bounty
Then you just have to pick it up and carry it back to base. Silver is heavier than iron, copper, and tin, so we can only grab about 22 per load. But Brynjar made a path for us to follow through the snow, so we have a regular hauling route.
So we seem to be well setup in that base.
It also has one more feature. Right outside of it is the altar needed to summon Moder, the next boss. We haven’t even found one of the runes that give you the location yet, we just found the altar when running around.
Summoning Moder is just a short walk away
That screen shot is me on the rock above the door that leads to the room pictured at the top of the post. We won’t have far to go. The question is probably how much damage will Moder do to the base when we summon it? We have a ways to go on that, but sooner or later it will happen.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 