Originally posted by Faceplant8:

What do you consider "cheese defense tactics"?

In general, I don't do anything. If I don't want to have to deal with any mobs, I build a double stone castle wall.

In the black forest a stake wall will keep out the pests and generally slow down trolls long enough to deal with them. In swamp and beyond I just build a building with stone walls.

The mobs in the plains are pretty static for the most part, so you will generally not have fuling knocking at your door, but deathsquitos will keep you from farming in your underwear.

Of course, you have to deal with events. If you don't want to take them on / agro them away, you can generally make a safe spot with strong walls / removable stairs, etc, and repair as necessary, but they may tear up parts of your base in the process.

The only cheese defense that is truly the greatest and smelliest of the all the cheeses is building a moat or a terrain stone wall. I build moats around my bases and get completely ignored for the most part. And I use wards to detect any pesky ranged attacks on items in the fortress's perimeter.

Only thing that will be a mess will be a gjall raid and that seems to be everyone's worst nightmare.

I generally avoid complex bases in the swamp, the water level in the swamp making moats impossible and nothing farmable but turnips will grow there. There is little reason to make a swamp base except for fun or style. As it sucks as a biome. Mistlands is unfortunately a similar case. As you can only grow magic shrooms or turnips. At least it has plentiful passive resources like iron scrap or copper scrap to keep you from having to go far for most advanced tier buildables.