i'd say meadows, forest or swamp. Mountains tend to be unpractical, and plains have the lox that can absolutely annihilate anything you've built in seconds.

Pretty much every biome has something like that... except Meadows, and only if you dont get a "The Ground shakes..." event. ;)

Don't forget the Deep North, quite possibly the best and worst place to build. You get absolute peace, at the cost of no resources nearby. You get to build huge things with very little restrictions, but for no reason. Also the blizzard drops my fps like a bowling ball off a building. Farming resources from a biome is one thing, but if you want to BUILD something, definitely Deep North.

Oh, you said Tundra. It's Deep North.

Here’s my tier list of biomes to build in:

1. Plains, best looking biome and you can farm the late game crops there, plus easy blackmetal transportation, in terms of aesthetics this one has a major edge

2. Mountains, very infrequent raids aside from a few skeleton surprises, barely any mobs that do a lot of structure damage, probably the safest biome for a base

3. Meadows, looks nice and only raids will threaten your base, easy starting biome

4. Black Forest, has lots of wood but trolls and the uneven ground make it hard to establish a good base, meadows are just better in every way

5. Swamp, terrible, always rains, water everywhere, tons of mobs that deal significant structural damage, super dark, uncuttable trees everywhere limiting space

In my world my two largest bases are in the plains and mountains, my largest in the mountains because I found a really cool location, and a farm base in the plains. My original meadows base now only serves as a graveyard to hold my old portals that still find use and as an onion farm. Never even attempted to build in the other 2 biomes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2523333303
Swamp definitely has its charms.

Black Forest? I love the uneven terrain. I don't build on flat ground..stilt houses in the woods feels more natural to me I guess.

I guess I would argue that mountain is worst. Drakes seem to be much more interested in wrecking your base than even squitos. Maybe it just seems that way because they spread fire vs one hit here and there (?). Also wolf howls. And mtn almost never has shore access.

Best ... is that sweet location you love. Its got nothing to do with the biome. Meadow is certainly safer, but once the night spawns ramp up that seems unimportant.

Meadows with good boat access, and must be close to the Black Forest (helps with early ramp up) and having a beech forest nearby for a endless supply of wood. I typically also build a fortification in the plains late game, and plenty of small "safe houses" in various locales, usually next to swamps, mountains, etc.

I frequently raze Draugr Villages for my meadows base, as the pre-flattening is nice.

Starting mini base goes close to Eikthyr and the Forsaken Stones in the meadows. After you kill Bambi's dad, you can come back to that base later and put up a portal. (If it's your first run, maybe don't put it too close to Eikthyr. If you know how to handle tutorial boss, you can put it as close as you want.)

Second base usually goes in meadows next to the Black Forest and near water for tin and for sailing. Some scouting is needed because you want both crypts and copper nearby. POI farms usually show up in meadows close to BF and can be converted into a decent base. Once you have portals and the karve you can open the map and start looking for your real base location.

My personal preference is in meadows with as many other biomes nearby as I can get. But truthfully once you have portals that doesn't matter a whole lot. Pretty scenery, and water access if you don't mod your portals, is probably the most important thing. Mountain rarely has easy water access. And swamp is too gloomy for me to enjoy spending time there. And by the time you feel comfortable in the plains, you've almost got everything anyway. Black forest isn't bad, but you don't have a lot of flat surface so I'd recommend pine tree houses or towers. Just make sure your base trees are protected from troll attacks.

For me, all biomes have their merits, it is all about the in-between places.

Every biome (except Meadows) have their trolls.
Black Forest - Trolls (weak to pierce)
Swamp - Abominations (weak to fire, slash)
Mountains - Stone Golems (weak to blunt, pick axe)
Plains - Lox (weak to pierce)

And trolls can get you everywhere during "The Ground Shakes" event. Well, anywhere higher than Black Forest, they gonna be killed by the denizens there...

I like Black Forest, Mountains and Meadows to build, because it is just plain beautiful there. Plains are nice as well, but very dangerous.

Edit: Best to build practically and efficiently is probably Meadows and Plains. But then you also got to haul your ore there, so you probably have at least a small base in the Black Forest for pretty much all ores that this biome borders at.

I have built my largest base, a tavern, in the meadows. One side of the base (and it is not THAT large) borders Black Forest, the other side borders Plains. That Meadows biome is very small where it ends at the sea.

The fourth side borders Meadows and not far away Mountains. Additionally there's a Swamp nearby. So I got all biomes very close by (or literally at my doorstep). Suffice it to say, this base is excellent for gathering and processing ore.

For me a base location is dictated by biome placement.

Black forest with many copper nodes to set up for bronze,
After that I look for a black forest copper node near a large swamp with crypts and /or mountain with silver.

Normally around Iron I am ready to set up a portal hub base that may end up being my main base in the black forest near a swamp.

But if I find a Maypole I will set up a sleeping/resting base around it.

In the end though there are no "best" it really comes down to what you feel like. I have had main bases in all the biomes and each offers their own unique environments to enjoy.

Mine is both the best and worse to make the ultimate.

I have 1 main base, Then a ton of smaller outposts.

Main base straddles meadows (best imo) and plains (personal worse).

Allows me to grow all food types, etc.

On my last seed, I built a large network of catwalks in the trees in the Swamp, mostly for hunting down Wraiths for Chains. Honestly, it looked pretty awesome to have a boardwalk up in the trees, too. Pretty much that entire biome was my base, you could say. I know people really don't consider the Swamp for base-building, but it can be really pretty when you're 10 meters up or so and can walk around like you own the place.

I always have a main base in meadows at the Starter island in a nice bay directly at the shore with everything I need (comfort, workbench n forge, boar-, wolve- and plant-farm, smelting, cooking etc). Its like a little village with a harbour for my ships and a portal hub. From there I venture out into the different biomes to get stuff. Copper and tin is always enough on the starter Island, the further metals I farm on other Island, fill up 2 chests and haul them back to my base with the boat. There's no better feeling to come back to my harbour with a longboat full of Iron or silver....
In plains I only make a little farm base for the plants that grow only there.
The rest are only small outposts for the portals.

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

In the end though there are no "best" it really comes down to what you feel like. I have had main bases in all the biomes and each offers their own unique environments to enjoy.

Well to be fair, every biome is pretty good and are places which requires progression. It's actually one of the best implemented biomes I've ever seen in gaming since there's always something useful in these places where you need to go.


Well as for base building, it's actually something i think which is the best in terms of practicality. I'd say meadows and plains are best mainly for that reasons. Usually meadow doesn't have much but I usually gather from other biomes.

Swamp I think is the third best/worst biome mainly since you get blood pudding, red cubes and chains from this biome and you can farm them easily at the cost of enemies constantly attacking the base. I also think there is a tough slime that drops an ore but I'm sure it's too rare or not the most reliable to get iron but it's there.

Black forest isn't great but you always get dwarven eyes which is handy and maybe those blue plants but you also get them from swamps. It does have the best visuals and I guess cone trees so that's that. The biggest problem are gonna be the trolls which are gonna be a pain without trenches. I wasn't sure if it's worse than mountain since it almost doesn't offer anything other than the eyes however you can sprint around freely which is a good thing compared to mountains.

I'd say mountains is usually the worst place to build a base and that's simply because there's a lot of annoyances like jumping, falling, snowstorms, setting up the base and the loot just isn't that great compared to plains biome in terms of food or useful loot. However outside of its issues, the best thing about building on mountains is that getting raided becomes much less difficult which makes it far more reliable than making trenches or ground walls.

I generally don't think any biomes are too terrible per say to build a base since they have some ups but I'd say that biomes like Swamp, black forest and mountains are generally good for portal camps than bases since majority of the times you can bring most loot with a portal and the ores require you to transport with a boat more than making a new base. Then again it's also really good to build a base near another biome since transporting said items from distance can sometimes be annoying.