Black metal chests are HuGe. One or two are fun in your personal banko but the iron ones take up so much less space and frankly filling them is good enuf hoarding. Have mine 3 high 10-13 long each for food & armory mats depending on how far along I am on the seed. And indeed, all labeled.
Bed being over the kitchen area allows for some decorating that serves purpose of increasing resting both when cooking and sleeping with the hot tub out on balcony overlooking the view. Times are rough for my Vikings. I don't bother going past 16 atm as it allows me to have full use of day then reminds me to go home at night.

Armory and weapon room to display all armor and weapons in game. Better make a piggery out back for the piggies.

I made one large castle and didn't find it particularly effective. Too much runnin around to do all the daily chores.
Have found for me armory and kitchen as 8x10 floor pieces one story with central sleeping, dining 2 stories also 8x or 10 leaves me room to enlarge, remodel without feeling like I am hoofing it half a mile to make food, repair armor. They are all connected in either a U shape or as a longhouse. Also holds couple roaming portals for exploring and one more to portal hub. You will find a system that works for you that is efficient and nice looking. May take some time though as what we think we need or like and what we really find useful don't always line up.
I want to drop in from my portal, dump off mats, repair gear, throw stuff in the furnace, make coal, ck and update consumables, make food if I need to, hit the sack in a matter of minutes. Don't want to wander around, up and down, back and forth inefficiently. But that's just me. Form follows function.

i would wait with building a storage area until the blacksteel storage boxes has been unlocked, the additional storage is a massive upgrade but im curious to see some storage areas myself since a new base is next on my list after i find 2 star lox

and havent even started with my foundation since i want an efficient basement that can hide as much storage bloat as possible

Boathouse

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2931060172

I have all types. A large big energy investment home should have:
- a place for comfort buff at max.

- storage. Personally I put storage near what its for, eg metal bar box near forge, raw and cooked foods have chests in the kitchen, even my ferment barrel has a chest of completed meads and raw.

- crafting. all stations fully upgraded. more on this later.

- kitchen: this means cooking station, oven, cooking pot, and ugprades with smoke handled. More on this as well.

- big crafting (smelter, kiln, etc can be inside if you handle smoke, or outside, etc)
- farming area
- ocean access and boating launch (simple or complicated)
- defenses: moat/wall/etc
- portals. at least 2, one that is always locked and unconnected for use when exploring, and one that you can dial to others (I keep signs as to what name leads where). I recommend closer to 5, as there are some others you may like to lock (vendor, spawn point, alternate homes / farms) all the time.

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ok, so ... there are any number of ways to do all that.
my go-to design for a large home is kitchen on top, so the smoke is handled naturally (usually, the smoke simply goes outside without a chimney at all, like put the hearth against your outside wall and put a wall above it at viking head height. then use a roof tile to shift the smoke out one tile and cover it from rain)
and my comfort 'bedroom' below that, with the hot-tub also stuck into the outside wall with the smoke out of my way.
and the bottom levels become crafting and storage. If you want to have indoor smoke crafting, it can go upstairs with the kitchen or vented some other way.

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and, a home does not have to be that big for all this crap. My current home, which I simply LOVE to be in and use, is a single 6x6 floor tile square, with 2 of the outer walls lined with crafting stations (no smokey ones) and a pit dug under the floor with all the comfort and crafting upgrades that get in my way. Its a trainwreck down there, but everything is out of sight, leaving me a sparse bedroom with max comfort doubling as a kitchen, a small attic storage space, and a simple crafting area that is fully functional yet tightly packed. As for smokey crafting, I have a chest of all the mats to make any of the bits hidden in an exterior wall with lawn access, and I just build and destroy as needed: I don't do very much of this anymore, just ammo mats really, or occasional iron runs.

for my dock, I level an area where I can no longer use my pick in calm waters, just that high, about boat size square. I break the boat there and can get my stuff back in the shallows. I raised earth to just above the waves in a storm (missed this by a meter or two so it gets wet now and then) and put down rock stairs and floors and a small storage shed to complete the dock idea.

a full home with everything visible and placed artistically needs about 10x10 X3 space assuming a fair portal hub and storage area. A tight home with it all buried I did in 6x6 as I said.
massive storage areas are tricky. I have put chests down into the floor, carefully making it parallel so its smooth to walk on, then you can do the same to make a wall of chests that are more or less flat. I recommend labels. But again, I don't do a lot of that, I prefer store where it is used approach with a junk box to dump in mid-runs (sort it later idea) and overflow storage for things I have too much of.


here is my partly complete (finished it and redid decor later) ... stairs up to storage chests, kitchen on the outer wall (with hot tub at the kitchen wall under the floor), chests make up part of the floor (added another by the oven) and small one at foot of bed) and the 2 doors lead to the wrap around crafting hallway that is just wide enough to walk through and use stations.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924987771

another home, a full rather large one, the kitchen on top (the hearth is directly over my bed) in the open air (poles loft a roof) and a gap in the stone walls that you can't quite see leads to smelter/kiln/windmill/etc out in the open air (no roof at all on that part). Smoke all handled by being on top, basically a large circle design, goes down to bedroom, then crafting room, then storage room.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783237248

location is everything, this is both meadows and plains, for farming reasons, and because its an awesome island, scenic.

You can also go individualized bedrooms. Each person can decorate to their own liking.

Trophy Room

Originally posted by jman9er:

Trophy Room

Ohhhhh didn't even think of that one. Good Call!

Separate room (or a connected building) from forge/workbench/etc room for smelting/blast furnace/kilns.

suggestion :
wait till you unlock black marble. then build a new even better mainbase. its worth it believe me. dont waste your time with stone for too long. plus you can also get ALOT more stone faster in the memelands compared to before.

Barn for your pets

You can never have enough rooms. Even if they stay empty for a bit you'll find that you eventually need that second storage room, or separate kiln/smelter room, or that display room for every gear set in the game. It's better to go ahead and build them and find a use for them later than to be trying to layout a new room when the ones you have overflow.

Without spoiling too much, you'll probably need a separate room or at least room corner for virtually every aspect of medieval life... except an outhouse. That's probably not going to be needed.

I like to keep my things stored near the facilities which require them. I have a lodge of sorts with one big open space instead of separate rooms, but there are various screens and several floors which break the building up in what could be thought of as rooms. Let me think...

The outermost defensive walls are something like 80x80 by area, I'm currently in process of measuring and expanding that to achieve proper symmetry and some additional fortification.

Between the rectangle exterior walls and the circular stakewall, there's beehives, charcoal kiln, obliterator, some workbenches and stonecutters, and refinery.

The inner yard contains open-air smithy, a small cabin for spinning wheel, the mill, a small terrace for cartography and maybe some future things, treasure chamber, wizard's tower with portals, and various storage piles for firewood, coal etc.

Inside the lodge, the first floor contains there's the entryway with storage and workbench, a small living room confinement with fireplace (the place for resting), a dining area with storage for food, the kitchen, bathing area and brewing vats. Most of the chests are on the first floor since the building gets more narrow upwards. There's various trophies and decorations hanging here and there.

The second and third floors have enough space to allow for smoke ventilation to work without need for actual chimneys, as well as quirky stairwell which first goes up to second and third floor and then down to other side of second floor. Two bedrooms (lofts) are found on the second floor, one for me and one for a guest. The wizard's tower is accessed from second floor.

The final floor contains a sort of expedition portal, little bit of storage and entrance to the balcony, as well as the descending staircase to the other loft area.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2930845517

So that's, uh... 11-12 facilities outside and about 9 rooms or spaces with a unique function inside. My farm and pasture are found elsewhere and accessed by portals.

You could always simply have everything in a convenient longhouse or a long castle hall, especially if you want to put up signs for where everything is stored or house multiple guests. An armory with armor and weapon stands could also be a convenient addition at some point. If you want to build vertically, you should do that with iron beams instead of something like core wood beams, although the latter certain has its aesthetic as well.