On our current world, we've found a small island nestled between two land masses. The island is half black forest, half plains. Small enough to cover with spawn blocking elements, yet large enough for local farm plots for both plains/regular crops. We've always just farmed locally the regular crops, and set up a barley/flax farm via teleporter.

AND.... the distance between the island and land masses is just right for building a couple of stone bridges.

Lovely spot, and just right for building a base, which we have just started! It'll be our first island base. Though we have found quite a few islands that would have also been great places, this'll be our first one to build something 'permanent'.

Spend some time exploring. All the generated worlds we've ever played have had some stunning building locations, but it may take a while to find the perfect spot.

Originally posted by jthibeault:

Originally posted by brown29knight:

I found a tiny plains island well off the coast, ocean on every side.

Can you grow ALL crops on a plains farm, or just flax and barley?

just flax and Barley. I COULD grow the island to a meadow area (no land, but sailing through it reads meadows) nearby, but it would take thousands of rock. I'm mostly eating serpent stew, lox meat pies, and bread, (having finally stockpiled a couple hundred of each) with occasional sausages, wolf jerky, and eye scream when I'm going to be farming, sailing, or chopping wood in the meadows, so I do not miss the lack of the root vegi's. Easy enough to build a cliff-walled farm in the meadows and a portal to it if I ever decide to farm them.

And I don't know the answers to your other questions. I imagine the trench would be similar, but the island base I'm on keeps any foes from spawning at all, so trenches and walls are meaningless for that base.

wow, some of them look pretty amazing! I know stone is going to be a huge pain but it is truly my wish to find an island for a home. Keep em coming!

I had an island before the change to raising terrain, I miss it.

I found a tiny plains island well off the coast, ocean on every side. Tried to build a lighthouse, but I'm not very good at building so it looks really bad. That said, there was enough room for 2 smelters, 2 windmills, 2 blast furnaces, 4 coal burners, a bunch of beehives, and a small farm. Also 8 cloudberry plants were growing there that I saved.

Spent several days and a couple thousand stone expanding the farm, but it otherwise had room for everything I wanted.

Map seed aJUfrS903Q

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2756574041

That is the seed and location, if you want to try it out for yourself.

If I were to settle on a peninsula, and dig a trench cutting off the end of the peninsula from the rest of the land, would this be a similar effect of having a trench around your whole base?

And, more details on the 'problem' of raising terrain? Is it an FPS issue? If so, I though that I've seen people say that any terrain modification (leveling, raising, lowering) affects FPS?

Originally posted by brown29knight:

I found a tiny plains island well off the coast, ocean on every side.

Can you grow ALL crops on a plains farm, or just flax and barley?

They surely are fun, but sadly don't have any pics. The pro side is probably that in most cases you can build more freely without having to think of defending certain parts - if it is further out on sea. It really isn't all that expensive, you can just build on small existing islands you can find in your worlds. From there you can in most cases extend them to a certain amount (the height will prob be the limit as you may encounter some really huge waves more often). So for the building area you will only need stone depending on how large you want to build there.
Edit: And awesome stuff that was already posted!

The Island was done before Heart and Home, but around 80% of it was already a natural island which I just had to re-shape a bit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2756335509
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2756335354
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2756335272
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2756335203
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2756335112

Did a small extension lately and considering how much stone it costs now to build up terrain I wouldn't recommend doing a big island base anymore, at least none where you have to do a lot of terraforming.

from an old server my friend ran which is sadly gone. this castle started out as a little house on an island. the island had two approaches from the north and south, and a shallow lake between it and the mainland. i had a few ground shaking events in a row and the trolls smashed smashed my house... so i fortified.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2446743795
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452826898
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452826631
really liked how this floor turned out.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452828269
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452828470
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2539101120

Does rebuilding Atlantis count?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2488300568

I decided to restart on a new world after the H&H update and managed to find a nice little island near the starting zone. It's my first attempt at an island base and it's still very much a work in progress, but I'm quite happy with it so far. I'm still in the bronze age, so things don't look super pretty right now. Still trying to figure out how to make the roof more visually appealing.
It took several thousand rocks (I'd guess well over 4000) to build up and dozens of hours collecting said rocks and other materials (I wish I had kept track). In case anyone is curious, I do use some mods for aesthetic purposes: HD Valheim, Candymanns Realistic Foliage, MoreGates (for the windows and doors), Plant Everything (for the bushes by the front entrance). No building assistance mods.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2755669887
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2755670765
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2755671259
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2755673247
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2755673733

Nice stuff Raven!

I'd show one if I had built on one, but I never considered it.
If I were to choose to build an outpost on an island, I'm sure I could find one, but I would never waste any time 'making an island' o.O