Originally posted by UncleAcidic:

in one place i planted trees in an offset pattern around my base and cut them down but left the stumps and logs. trolls can't walk on them and even hurt themselves trying to get to me.

OH, thanks for that! I had not noticed they had issues even with stumps. That will be useful information! My tree barrier is already in a staggered pattern, so I'll have the same set up should I opt to just leave stumps at any point!

1) its a chore. you have to click a lot in the same area, and often have to raise or lower chunks before it will flatten, even if its a minor delta. The easy way out is to use a stone floor, which solves the problems for homes by being thicker than the differences and evens it all out nicely. Outside the home, you either say good enough or be prepared to spend a lot of time. Note that the cultivator sometimes works better, and sometimes not.

2) your best bet if you like you home and hate repairs is to make your home monster proof and get away from it when its attacked. Monster proofed is a mix of a trench, hoe-raised walls, natural terrain, and other tricks like fires or traps can block a path. you will want at least 2 10x10 floors to fit everything the game currently has 'neatly' so that it looks even half decent. If you don't care how it looks or bury part of it in a pile, half that.

3) they work fine inside. You do need to vent it. it just needs space for the 3 ports to be accessible. Its big and heavy, you can't put it onto wood floor.

4) it will be here when you wake up. Put it down. Eventually that one awful body run wlll make you want to put it down for a few hours. Everything eventually gets old, but I am rediscovering building with the new bits and will be playing house for a while.

Leveling is pretty good but don't expect perfection. If you start in an area where there is only some minimal up and down you are way better off. As noted, the ground levels to match level at bottom of feet - on the ground, not on anything else like rocks or bldg pieces. There will be times when you want to make a nice hillside without making a minicliff. Stand at a 90 degree angle to your road or flattened area and the game makes a nice grade (most the time) unless you are trying to do too much elevation change.
If you get dimples and pimples they can be fixed - pimple with pick and dimple with one fill in with hoe which you can then even out.
Sometimes coming back after reopening the game will allow some last minute elevation changes that didn't work before. You can also try using the cultivator if things start to go south, then go back to the hoe. In the end we are not duplicating the pyramids so a little roughness is to be expected.
Making trails with hoe in the swamp is a great way to learn how the hoe works, as is making trails on steep mountainsides. You can hoe your way across almost vertical slopes.

The leveling of ground is quite frustrating, I've gotten so I don't even bother. I just build wood or stone floors and leave it.

For the base, really it will all be super frustrating until you dig a moat around it. Make it deeper than your character and too wide to jump. A log stretched across allows access that monsters can't do. then you are safe and can stand up and shoot arrows at them as they wander helplessly around in your moat.

My bases always have an indoor part and an outdoor part behind the walls. The outdoor part for the things that smoke like the smelter.

The game gets a lot easier when you can block successfully. By the time you get bronze armor you should be able to kill a troll without taking any damage by blocking his attacks with a shield or kiting him around and hitting with a bow and arrow. Same with the skeletons in the dungeons,

A couple of things to make it a bit easier - I use 2 stamina and 1 health food. The stamina is more important if you can block. Make sure to plant the onions and carrots. The food you get from them is a great benefit. you will want hundreds!

Explore! the game is all about exploration and with Eikthyr power you can run away from most any difficulty or if it gets dark when you are far from home. Record discoveries on the map - bees, tin, copper, etc.

Terrain - the leveling tool does level to where you are standing, but it has limitations. Each chunk of ground is basically a cube and the hoe can level within that one cube up or down a little, but it can't add or subtract cubes. For that you either need rocks to raise ground or the pick axe to knock it down a little. After you do that, the level tool will smooth out the bumps.

Raids - They increase with each boss killed. Some raids are boss+certain creature killed. Your first real worry will be trolls after the Elder plus the first dead troll. After Bonemass you will have to start thinking about flying raids. After the boss you start getting raids from the next level up, so swamp raids after Elder. Good idea to scout ahead before killing the boss so you know what to expect.

Smelter - I've never tried to put one inside, but I do know they started making smoke matter at some point.

Addictiveness - Bwahahaha, they have you now! A couple hundred hours maybe?

1. It does, to a point. You can only raise or lower ground so far by levelling - the difference will have to be made up with raising or picking axing. Shift key will target height to target area rather than where you're standing.
   
2. Every 46 minutes there is a 20% chance of a raid event when the player is within 40m(?) of a base structure. There's a list of base structures in the fandom wiki, includes things like benches camp fires and torches. New raid events unlock as you progress by killing bosses and certain enemies.
   
3. Smelter - and all fire - will choke if smoke builds up near it. Smoke needs about a 2x2 hole to escape, despite being "smoke" it's actually large particles that won't pass through anything much smaller. Smoke will also dissipate over time, with enough height a chimney isn't needed. There's a good video on youtube detailing how smoke works.
   
4. Beat it a few times, with different play styles and/or mods. Perhaps start playing earlier in the evening, and set an alarm to go to bed?

Everyone is saying the hoe works to level based on where you are standing, that's not how it works for me. For me it levels to just a bit lower than where I am standing.

Lets say I'm building a bridge and am standing on a wooden floor tile. Leveling right next to that always levels to a little below the floor tile, leaving a gap. It's a big enough gap that the cart gets a bit hung up on it (and it just looks bad).

There's gotta be some trick to it to get it to be a more seamless blend with that floor tile that y'all just take for granted, which I'm not aware of.

That could be two things. Yes, it will tend to level to just below a wooden tile if you're standing on one. This doesn't usually leave a visible gap however, and may be the issue of leveling only raising so far - I suggest raising this bit of ground and trying to level it again, see if that works. Either way snapping a wooden stairs onto the edge of that wooden floor tile should get you a smooth transition for the cart.

It's also not infinitely variable, such that it is possible to get a mismatch where no matter what you do building pieces and terrain just won't play ball.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

It's also not infinitely variable, such that it is possible to get a mismatch where no matter what you do building pieces and terrain just won't play ball.

Ahah! That didn't occur to me, as it has worked in some places, but not in others. I knew I was missing something basic.

You are basically saying there is an invisible 'grid' and the level tool can only snap to grid levels, not between them, so if the height of my floor tiles is between those 'grid points' it won't be perfectly level?
I have found where that occurs my choices are a bit too low or a bit too high, and never 'quite right'....so I guess I should have figured it out. Thank you so much for explaining it!

Thank you to everyone else in the thread for also providing answers to everything. It is appreciated.

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

Raids - They increase with each boss killed. Some raids are boss+certain creature killed. Your first real worry will be trolls after the Elder plus the first dead troll.

That's where I am right now, though I haven't had a troll actually raid my base yet. I fought my first troll in the Black Forest about 10 minutes after beating the first boss. (I died...3 x, before I got smart enough to use my bow.... Hahah).

I've planted a very thick tree line on the landward side of my base to help when a troll attacks my base...since that first encounter, I have found them pretty darn easy to fight as long as I have a lot of large obstacles like trees to impede them.

My worst side of the base is that it's built on the shore of a lake. I thought it was pretty, but it didn't occur to me that mobs can swim at the time. :(

The hoe levels to the terrain height of where you are standing. If you are standing on a rock, it will level to the ground under the rock, not to the top of the rock, same for building pieces.

Yeah, kinda, and I don't know why build pieces don't align to that grid either. My guess, the devs didn't really consider the interaction between terrain and building that deeply despite that it's a major part of the game. Changing it now would probably break most peoples worlds so it's likely a no-go.

If I really don't like a slightly floating (but still blue) floor I might take horizontal beams and snap them to the edges, that should be enough to cover the gaps.

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

Raids - They increase with each boss killed. Some raids are boss+certain creature killed. Your first real worry will be trolls after the Elder plus the first dead troll.

That's where I am right now, though I haven't had a troll actually raid my base yet. I fought my first troll in the Black Forest about 10 minutes after beating the first boss. (I died...3 x, before I got smart enough to use my bow.... Hahah).

I've planted a very thick tree line on the landward side of my base to help when a troll attacks my base...since that first encounter, I have found them pretty darn easy to fight as long as I have a lot of large obstacles like trees to impede them.

My worst side of the base is that it's built on the shore of a lake. I thought it was pretty, but it didn't occur to me that mobs can swim at the time. :(

in one place i planted trees in an offset pattern around my base and cut them down but left the stumps and logs. trolls can't walk on them and even hurt themselves trying to get to me.

1. it does level out to your height. sometimes you reach the max that it will go, so you need to use the raise ground function of the hoe. you'll need a work bench and stone to do this.
2. the best method for base defending is a trench. ground enemies can't jump or get up steep inclines. just leave room for future expansion. work benches stop spawns inside your base.
3. I have indoor smelters. they just need lots of clearance above them.
4. iv'e got almost 800hrs in. good luck getting sleep.

1) The hoe flattens to where you're standing normally, or to where the tool is aiming if you hold shift. The tool can only change terrain so much from where it was. If you want to lower terrain a lot, you're going to need a pickaxe. If you want to raise it a lot, you need to use the Raise option.

2) Attacks are based on which bosses you've killed. Enemy health scales based on the number of players nearby. If you're by yourself, there's no scaling.