Originally posted by AzureTerra:

Originally posted by Ryzilynt:

Big castles require wood-iron framing.

Good to know, i was having trouble with expanding on a ruined tower and gave up on height because of it breaking all the time

Before I lost my world I had 4 floors, each 2 full size stone high. I pre-framed it all with iron wood beams first and then placed the stone to link to them. Then used darkwood for some of the roof and straw. I believe I could've gone 1 story higher if I wanted to farm more iron.

If you really want to get into the weeds of this, check out the wiki:
https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Building_Stability

The main thing with building is understanding how the game decides on the level you are working on. When you start with your uprights, be sure they are blue. If they are seen by the game as sitting on a wood floor piece they will be green. This makes for many of the problems when only building a couple floors high. If something is not working, or part of a wall is turning red when everything at same level is orange or yellow means you have failed the first test, starting with you timber touching ground. Or as some will point out... The first piece of wood coming off a piece of stone will also be blue.
There are many ways to fiddle building in the game but first you have to understand how it works. Building your skeleton first is the best way until you get a bit of experience, then you can be more free-form. But it's like everything else in this game, being careful leads to better results. And I always say that most of the really fancy builds we see are made in free-fly mode. Only then can we defy gravity.

Originally posted by Ryzilynt:

Big castles require wood-iron framing.

Good to know, i was having trouble with expanding on a ruined tower and gave up on height because of it breaking all the time

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

Originally posted by Ryzilynt:

Wood-iron beams are a great solution for this. When stone touches wood-iron it s treated as ground (blue) .

That's not the way it works in my experience. Wood-iron beams do add support to stone, but they don't turn the stone into a base part. The only think I know of that works that way is that stone acks as ground for wood, so you can build a tall wooden roof, for example, on a stone wall that is at or near max height.

I built a stone castle that was a ground floor, a second floor, and a roof, with turrets that went up another floor (with stone tile roofs). All stone construction except for the wood-iron framing.

I was struggling as well to make a 2 story stone castle. Someone suggested to me the wood-iron framing for support and that did the trick. I was too lazy to rip everything down so the first two floors are stone and the third floor is wood. Doubled up the wood so it looks nice on the inside and out.

Natural stone, raised ground and pine trees also work. Planting pine trees to frame your castle would look pretty neat.

Originally posted by Ryzilynt:

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

That's not the way it works in my experience. Wood-iron beams do add support to stone, but they don't turn the stone into a base part. The only think I know of that works that way is that stone acks as ground for wood, so you can build a tall wooden roof, for example, on a stone wall that is at or near max height.

I built a stone castle that was a ground floor, a second floor, and a roof, with turrets that went up another floor (with stone tile roofs). All stone construction except for the wood-iron framing.

That doesn't sound unusual, but you can stack iron reinforced wood beams much higher than that, and if it made stone look like ground, then you could build very tall stone structures, and you can't.

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

Natural stone, raised ground and pine trees also work. Planting pine trees to frame your castle would look pretty neat.

I didn't know about pine trees, but, sure enough, it does appear to work.

There are some good vids that are very helpful. They show things you might not have tried yet and save you from much angst. There are some tricks and lots of fab builds you see are done in a creative mode that defies gravity but makes us think it's all easy. If you like building, watch a few. Will save you much time.

There are build limitations. The color of the piece when placed indicates it’s status. Blue (grounded) dark red (breaking point) it’s the number of connections from a blue piece that determines integrity.

That said your floor and foundation walls should all be in direct contact with ground. They should all be blue. If the ground is uneven use the hoe tool to level / raise and/or pick to lower. The hoe attempts to level to the height of your feet, not to where you are aiming it. Keep that in mind when using the tool.

While the general rules of building are fairly simple (ie sturdiness is determined by the shortest path from a part to a foundation) they become a bit more complicated once you start building with stone. Stone blocks cannot be supported by wood so it can be tricky to build say a stone ceiling for the floor of the second level for example.

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

While the general rules of building are fairly simple (ie sturdiness is determined by the shortest path from a part to a foundation) they become a bit more complicated once you start building with stone. Stone blocks cannot be supported by wood so it can be tricky to build say a stone ceiling for the floor of the second level for example.

Wood-iron beams are a great solution for this. When stone touches wood-iron it s treated as ground (blue) .

Big castles require wood-iron framing.

Great tips guys, thanks alot.
Have a good Valheim day, and may you be lucky surviving and finding what you need.
ps. we need Mjod ( beer ) in game for a nice evening by the fire. ;-)

Originally posted by Ryzilynt:

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

While the general rules of building are fairly simple (ie sturdiness is determined by the shortest path from a part to a foundation) they become a bit more complicated once you start building with stone. Stone blocks cannot be supported by wood so it can be tricky to build say a stone ceiling for the floor of the second level for example.

Wood-iron beams are a great solution for this. When stone touches wood-iron it s treated as ground (blue) .

That's not the way it works in my experience. Wood-iron beams do add support to stone, but they don't turn the stone into a base part. The only think I know of that works that way is that stone acks as ground for wood, so you can build a tall wooden roof, for example, on a stone wall that is at or near max height.