Originally posted by Fat Cat:

For me silver is more a pain than iron... Mountains are not near shores, are they? And the slope makes it too difficult to use a cart. And silver is heavier than iron.

Yes, mountains frequent the shores AND you can see them far off in the boat. If you are in deep water and can see a mountain, its probably a candidate: its likely tall, and its likely close to shore. My current iron / silver station is a 30 second slide down the side to the meadows and a 2 min walk tops from that, keep going parallel to shore for swamp.

the long boat annoys me, but it does what it does. Alternately you can break carts into boxes and kick them onto your karve, add 8 or 12 or so slots for 5 min of soccer.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I will switch to the long boat and see if i helps. Otherwise I'll just embrace the idea of relocating :)

the longboat works great with a portal
put the iron into the longboat and the rest goes thru the portal directly to the storage.

so you cann fill the longboats belly with a ton of iron

You can portal to the swamp area, build a safe spot to put your smelter and get 6 copper from a nearby black forest make a forge and then smelt 10 iron to turn into 100 nails at the forge and grab the extra materials for the longboat (most recyclable from karve) once built Now you'll only have to make one return trip back to home with a boat full to the brim of ore.

To answer your question though, you probably wouldn't have figured that out on your first playthrough. I have my own horror story regarding this matter. I spose you would have figured out once you did a trip back you can make the longboat and then would been oh damn now I can transport heaps of ore no problem and then later realising the logistical time savings you could have made.

If your home is not on the shore close enough that you can do a short hop to get the iron from boat to smelter, you may want to take the smelter to the iron. That is annoying too, though: You need a lot of forge upgrades to make or upgrade some items.

I find it really easiest to build on the shore, portal to the swamp, boat back home. It does not get any better than this without cheating.

Not exactly cheating, but boating does not use stamina. You can ride home loaded down with tons of iron in your inventory. You won't be able to shoot much this way, so your route needs to be safe and so on.

You don't have to leave your base behind. But if you decide you want to do that, maybe put the next one within a short distance of the ocean with good water access to all the biomes.

I scouted a lot before setting latest base to make sure it was close to a huge iron resource. Portal to it, run back 5mins

Over investing early on in building a place is something you learn not to do after multiple playthroughs.

Anymore I just wait. Early raids are kind of a joke so you don't need defenses. Really only after the elder goes down.

Basically what I do is have a home at the first boss spawn with a fence around the garden area.

After I kill the first boss and work through the Black Forest I scout for a swamp with lots of crypts near a black forest... my current game I found an awesome spot.
Since I was going to have iron I set up my main base there for all the upgrades to stuff on a copper node in the black forest surrounded by swamp.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2791169888
Set some portals up on top of crypts to repair and get back from running iron out.

Set up base defenses and everything there before I beat the Elder.
Once I was set up for processing Iron there and base set up with portals I grabbed the key from the elder and was making iron that day. Running iron out, portal back.. processing it while I was digging it out and running more back.

It went super fast that way... few in game days and I am already in the mountains.

Now it depends on the mountain. If I have to go far I would make a new place to make silver and run iron over I may need but a great mountain is just across a channel from the swamp so I am just running the silver there. Off the mountain to a close shore and boat it back.

For me, the logistics of finding places and how I set up is the most interesting part of the game to me and keeps me playing multiple worlds since each one will present unique problems to solve due to the map RNG.

For me silver is more a pain than iron... Mountains are not near shores, are they? And the slope makes it too difficult to use a cart. And silver is heavier than iron.

Originally posted by Fat Cat:

For me silver is more a pain than iron... Mountains are not near shores, are they? And the slope makes it too difficult to use a cart. And silver is heavier than iron.

They can be, you just have to be lucky enough to find them.
This one even had a maypole at the top of the hill there. That made a nice base actually.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2672781835

If it really becomes a pain, use the world hopper trick to move the iron.
If you dont know the trick:

- Make a random world, set up some chests
- Farm up iron on your main world, and pack all the iron on your character
- Log out of your main world, log into your random, place iron in chests
- Log on to your main world and go to your base, log on to your random and grab your iron
- Log on to your main world and your iron will be on your character in your base

... or use a mod :P

use the portals

i make different bases for different purposes and keep 'boat kits ' at certain places , for example ocean access on an east and west coast , use the portals and then drop a boat ....i only keep one main base , currently a converted draugr village, but a bed and a farm are in different locations -you can cross the entire map with a portal and then take the boat back with the ore

You can transport 150 iron per trip given you can carry 450 carry weight since 30 iron will weigh around 300lbs and the karve can carry 120. Once you make 1 trip you can build a longship which can carry so much iron you won’t fill it up to capacity ever. I don’t see why you need to make a ton of trips, just get a load of iron over time, and then once you have enough load all of it up in the ship and sail back

Make a longship ,fastest boat and you can transport tons of iron in it