The harsh but magical world of Enshrouded isn't all about fighting and exploring. The game also features a robust base building system to help you create the lodge, cottage, or castle of your dreams. After all, every adventurer needs a place to relax and store their hard-earned loot. However, choosing where to build can be tricky. With our Enshrouded base building guide, we'll tell you the best base locations, the NPCs you should have at home, and more. Let's get to work!

Best Base Locations in Enshrouded

The best base location depends on what you're looking for. Some areas are ideal for beginners, while others provide some nice scenery, resources, or unique building opportunities for the more creatively-inclined. Here, we've listed some of the best general spots.

Plains Near Longkeep

The areas surrounding Longkeep are a great choice for a first base. Naturally, you'll have access to the Springlands early on. They're mostly open terrain, which makes it easy to learn the building system without having to reshape a complicated landscape.

It's a good location if you want:

• An accessible starter base.
• Plenty of open building space.
• Easy access to early-game resources.

When you're starting out in Enshrouded, your first base doesn't need to be too complicated. A nice small home with space for storage and a workshop is exactly what the Springlands can help you create.

Ferndale

Not everyone wants to start from scratch. Ferndale is an excellent option if you prefer restoring an existing settlement rather than starting with an empty plot of land. The ruins scattered about can give you plenty of existing infrastructure to build on top of or next to. This area also has plenty of resources nearby, like a well, wood, stone, flint, and wide-open spots that could make a good farm.

The only tricky part of building in Ferndale is its proximity to the Shroud. You may experience a bit more enemy attacks if you live here, so you'll have to set up some suitable defenses.

Blue Goblet Tavern

The Blue Goblet Tavern in is a popular choice among creative builders. Its existing architecture makes it a natural choice for a tavern, inn, or medieval-themed village. Like in Ferndale, you can build around this rather than having to start from square one. You'll find it tucked away in a little corner of Revelwood. If you find the Revelwood Ancient Spire, head west-northwest and you should be able to spot it in a copse of trees.

Keep in mind that this location, while thematic and unique, isn't the strongest base location if you're going to be doing loads of long-distance exploration without fast traveling. It is a bit out of the way. Of course, you can always fast travel to your Flame Altar, but it's also nice to have a base that's within walking distance of other locations you may frequent.

Nomad Highlands

The Nomad Highlands are a strong choice for a larger mid-to-late-game base. This region is pretty close to several major areas and contains valuable resources and settlements. The varied terrain means you can have stretches of flat land for easy building, but also some vertical land formations to help you create a castle or fortress.

No one ever said that you have to build only one base! A base here could work well as a regional headquarters if you're regularly traveling between different parts of Embervale.

First Things First: Get a Flame Altar

No matter where you've decided to set up your base in Embervale, the most fundamental and crucial part of your base is the Flame Altar. It establishes the area where you can permanently build and reshape the terrain, while also functioning as a fast-travel point. Luckily, all you need to craft a Flame Altar is five pieces of Stone.

A Flame Altar starts with a 40 × 40 × 40 building area. Upgrading it can expand that area to the following:

• Level 1: 40 × 40 × 40
• Level 2: 80 × 80 × 80
• Level 3: 120 × 120 × 120
• Level 4: 160 × 160 × 160

You can also have up to 10 active Flame Altars in the world, though this is associated with broader Flame progression, not just your altar's building-area level.

• Relatively flat terrain.
• Space for farming.
• Room for NPC housing.
• Room for expansion.
• Nearby resources.
• Easy access to water, useful resource nodes, roads, or landmarks.
• Enough room for your main building and future expansions.

The best thing you can do when starting out is place your Flame Altar in a wide, open, and flat area. Once you become more advanced as a builder, you could experiment with placing it in more unique areas. Up against the side of a cliff, for example, might not give you a lot of room for crafting away from the cliff, but you could start building into the side of the cliff and up into the air.

Enshrouded Beginner Base Building Tips

Once you've selected a location, resist the urge to immediately start placing walls. Reign in your inner interior designing impulses, and start planning your general layout first. This can save you from having to make large changes later on or losing on some materials depending on what you need to destroy, so place everything with great care!

You'll also want to try to shape the terrain before constructing your walls. You can flatten areas, create terraces, dig into hills, and build platforms within your Flame Altar's protected area.

A flat area is easier for beginners, but don't be afraid to incorporate the natural landscape into larger builds. Towers and balconies are much easier to make if you're using naturally vertical pieces of the terrain to help you out. Additionally, some verticality can help you pack more room into a smaller area.

When thinking about your layout, consider your base as a small settlement rather than a single building. You'll eventually house NPCs, have a farm, and loads of workstations to put everywhere.

A practical base can be divided into a few different spaces like this:

• Main Hall: Flame Altar, storage, and general crafting.
• Workshop: Blacksmith, Carpenter, Alchemist, Hunter, and their crafting stations.
• Residential Area: Bedrooms and homes for Survivors.
• Farm: Crops, animals, beehives, and cooking equipment.
• Player Home: Bedroom, decorations, trophies, and personal storage.

Keeping things tightly organized can make your base building plans come together more easily, and make it easier to move around your home once it's built. Of course, the best part of base building is creating something that makes sense to you. If you'd rather have your bed next to the Blacksmith, go for it!

Most Important/Best NPCs for Your Base

One of the most important parts of base building is Survivors. After rescuing them, you can summon them to your settlements using the Summoning Staff and put them to work. Each Craftsperson you meet will specialize in a different area, and these are the ones that will be the most useful around your base.

• Blacksmith — Oswald Anders: Handles melee weapons, armor, shields, and metalworking.
• Carpenter — Cade Hawthorn: Unlocks storage, decorations, furniture, and several woodworking stations.
• Alchemist — Balthazar: Specializes in potions, spells, magical equipment, and alchemical craftin
• Hunter — Athalan Skree: Focuses on ranged equipment, arrows, leather, textiles, and related crafting.
• Farmer — Emily Fray: Unlocks farming and cooking equipment including the Seedbed, Cooking Station, Oven, and Beehive.
• Bard — Valory: Specializes in musical instruments, cosmetic items, banners, and decorations.
• Fisher — Captain Melville Fontane: Focuses on fishing equipment.

Other Enshrouded Base Building Tips to Live By

Give Your Survivors Their Own Homes

Instead of putting every Survivor in one giant workshop, consider giving each character their own room or building. This makes the settlement feel considerably more alive and helps with placing different items for storage in a more organized way. It also gives you another reason to decorate your base!

Improve Your Comfort Level

Comfort is more than decoration. Increasing your Comfort contributes to the Rested effect, which improves the duration of your maximum Stamina and Stamina Regeneration buffs. Furniture such as beds, tables, chairs, fireplaces, carpets, lighting, and decorations can all contribute to your base's Comfort. Build a dedicated bedroom or relaxation area and fill it with furniture rather than treating it as a simple space for your bed.

Build Dedicated Storage Rooms

Storage can quickly become one of the biggest problems in Enshrouded. Rather than scattering chests throughout your settlement, create a dedicated storage room or two.

Separate your resources into categories such as:

• Building materials.
• Wood and plants.
• Ores and metals.
• Shroud materials.
• Monster drops.
• Food.
• Farming supplies.
• Weapons and armor.

To make things even easier for yourself, you can store all of your resources into Magic Chests. These allow you and your NPC pals to pull from them for nearby crafting stations. Place your storage rooms and Magic Chests near your workshops so you can move from gathering to crafting without constantly running back and forth.

Build a Farm

A dedicated farm is one of the best additions to a larger base. It's one of the best ways to regularly get some food and other animal-made byproducts which can be useful for crafting.

Give the Farmer a section containing:

• Seedbeds
• Crop fields
• Fruit trees
• Beehives
• Cooking stations
• Animal pens
• Food storage

Don't Overcrowd Your Base

It's tempting to fill every available space with buildings, decorations, and crafting stations. However, you and your NPCs will get less stuck and lost if you leave some area for creating more open zones. Courtyards, gardens, plazas, roads, and empty patches of terrain give your settlement room to breathe and make individual structures easier to navigate.

Use the Land

As mentioned above, you don't always need to build everything yourself. Ruins, houses, towers, bridges, and even natural formations throughout Embervale can become part of your settlement or provide inspiration for new construction. Restoring an existing location or building into a hillside can save considerable time compared with building an entire town from the ground up. This is the best approach for those who want a base, but aren't too keen on base building themselves.

Create Multiple Bases

Resource gathering is fun, but it's not all you want to do in Enshrouded. If you keep crafting every station multiple times, it'll get pretty tiring. A main settlement can handle most of your crafting and storage, while smaller Flame Altar bases can provide convenient fast-travel points throughout Embervale.

Specialized outposts can also be useful near valuable resources in more remote regions. Or, perhaps you want your farm to be separate from your living quarters. It's all up to you!

Rebuild & Rehome

Don't feel obligated to stick to your first base. As you unlock better building materials, additional Survivors, and new crafting stations, you'll become more familiar with the game and what you want to build. If your original settlement becomes cramped or inconvenient, use what you've learned to create something new.

Of course, just remember that you won't be refunded any materials if you dismantle the old stuff. Even if you decide to leave your old home behind, it could stay standing and serve as a monument to how far you've come.