Claiming and growing a base

Claiming a base

A Base Marker is made at a Workbench from 16 wood, 8 plant fibre and 8 stone. Put it down where you mean to stay. It claims the ground round it, and you can only have one base at a time. You cannot place a new claim too close to another base: a claim keeps clear of the next one by its own radius plus a little more. Use the Marker to see how the base is doing.

If you take the Marker up again, your base ends. Its settlers leave, and the ground is free. Its turrets and traps stop working with it.

Levels

Your base has five levels: Camp, Hamlet, Village, Town and Stronghold. A base starts as a Camp. The base looks over its own ground every ten seconds or so while someone is near, counting what is there. It goes up a level as soon as it has everything that level asks for. It drops a level only after three looks in a row show less.

Need	Hamlet	Village	Town	Stronghold
Homes	1	2	4	6
Beds	1	3	5	8
Crops planted	4	12	24	36
Animals kept	none	none	2	4
Kinds of bench	1	2	3	4
Storage (crates and shelves)	1	3	5	7
Lights	3	6	10	16
Blocks built	80	250	600	1,200
Turrets and traps	none	none	none	3

Kinds of bench are a Workbench, a Forge Bench, a Lab Bench, a Furnace or an Oven. Homes are closed rooms with a roof, a bed and a light, as described on the homes page. Blocks built means walls, floors and roofs you have put up, not natural ground.

What each level gives

Level	Claim radius	Settlers who may move in	Turrets and traps that work at once	Faster crops inside	Income into the chest
Camp	14 blocks	0	1	no	1 times
Hamlet	20 blocks	1	2	no	1.25 times
Village	28 blocks	3	4	10% faster	1.5 times
Town	38 blocks	5	6	20% faster	2 times
Stronghold	50 blocks	8	8	30% faster	2.5 times

Each settler also needs a spare bed of their own: the owner keeps the first bed, so a base can only take in as many settlers as it has spare beds, up to the number in the table.

Who can build at your base

Inside the claim, only you can build, break or open chests. You can change this in the base screen with a setting for who may edit:

• Owner only: the default.
• Owner and party: you and the names on your allowed list (up to 16 names), plus your co-op party if it is set up.
• Everyone: anyone may build there.

Other players who try to change the ground are turned away with a message that says whose base it is. Nothing hostile spawns inside the claim.

Settlers

From a Hamlet on, a Wayfarer may move in when there is a spare bed and the base is close to you. Each newcomer takes a trade in this order: trader, farmer, smith, cook, outfitter. The trade a newcomer takes depends on what the base has: a farmer wants crops, a smith wants a bench, a cook and an outfitter want higher levels. Settlers live their day as the village folk do, sleeping in their beds at night and working near the Marker by day. You can talk to them and trade with them as anywhere else.

Once a world day, each settler pays into the chest by the Marker. The chest must be a crate within about a dozen blocks of the Marker to receive it. If the chest is full or missing, the pay waits in the base until you collect it from the base screen.

Tips

• A Hamlet needs just one home, one bed, four crops, a bench, a crate, three lights and 80 blocks built, so it is quick to reach.
• Put your crate within a dozen blocks of the Marker, or the pay will wait.
• The bigger the base, the bigger its claim, so plan the walls and the turrets around the wider ground.
• Raids and storms come from a Hamlet and a Village up. See raids, storms and defence.

← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.