Acceptable places to settle?

[MagicManICT]

You can survive without being near a mountain. This is more for foraging better curios than anything else. Given the rarity of them, they can be high traffic areas or hard to find one that isn't near a fair sized village. Swamps are common enough it won't be an issue. And soil is important, but not to plant food crops on. It's important for any trees you're going to grow, as the quality of soil can severely hamper your max quality of tree you can grow. You can worry about that later, and doesn't need to be inside your walls.

[Enaragon]

You can survive without being near a mountain. This is more for foraging better curios than anything else. Given the rarity of them, they can be high traffic areas or hard to find one that isn't near a fair sized village. Swamps are common enough it won't be an issue. And soil is important, but not to plant food crops on. It's important for any trees you're going to grow, as the quality of soil can severely hamper your max quality of tree you can grow. You can worry about that later, and doesn't need to be inside your walls.

I see, so its ok to have a tree farm a sizable distance away from my main base right? Also, what is the minimum q soil for a adequate tree farm?

[Vengyr]

You can survive without being near a mountain. This is more for foraging better curios than anything else. Given the rarity of them, they can be high traffic areas or hard to find one that isn't near a fair sized village. Swamps are common enough it won't be an issue. And soil is important, but not to plant food crops on. It's important for any trees you're going to grow, as the quality of soil can severely hamper your max quality of tree you can grow. You can worry about that later, and doesn't need to be inside your walls.

I see, so its ok to have a tree farm a sizable distance away from my main base right? Also, what is the minimum q soil for a adequate tree farm?

You don't have to plant trees at the soil spot, you just need to dig it, so trading works perfectly.

It can be as low as q40, it depends on what do you have, low q soil can be compensated by high q table, water, pot.

[MagicManICT]

It can be as low as q40, it depends on what do you have, low q soil can be compensated by high q table, water, pot.

Very true. Soil only accounts for about 1/6th of the overall tree Q.

And for tree farming, I suggest you wall it in. If people see you growing quality trees in the wild, either all the product will get picked or they'll get chopped down just to screw with you.

[Eemerald]

just about the cave thing, never build your base around a cave. Early world caves are great for storing items and the such, but people can dig to them and access your area, so just make sure the cave ure using, if you do, is separate and at a distance from your actual settlement.

I think you will find difficulty really getting high q nodes at this stage in the game, most are claimed, but trading is easy. I think like Eve said, having a clay node of some sort close is important, 10 mins is a bit of a trek tbh. When we set up towns the furthest we had to go to is the river by the front gate, because it made burning bricks and transport so much easier. An are which isn't crowded is important. An area where there aren't a lot of other towns, small or big. An area where there isn't a large faction, as peaceful as some are, it's likely they will expand, it's likely they wont appreciate their node areas for curios etc being disrupted, that the mining areas will already be taken etc etc.

I think you also need to think about where you are building, thinking ahead to your space needs. How big will your farms be? your industry area? you living space? your cooking area? etc etc. even as a hermit you need to think about them...unless you're just the messy type with random bits and pieces all over!
I also always consider walls, my inner walls the outer/sniper proof wall, if there's anything that's going to be walled off inside, etc. no point settling somewhere with too many cliffs or restrictions on any expansion you might want or need later.

[MagicManICT]

I've never had an issue with settling at a cave. I've made the outside walls of my bases large enough you can't see the cave from the wall, and make sure to wall off inside as close to the entrance as possible. (Had to wall around a small cave pond one time.) Of course, if the cave is sitting in a cliff/group of cliffs that are hard to wall around, this becomes less of an option.

The downside is you immediately need two claims to protect your buildings--one on the surface, one in the cave.

[Amanda44]

^^ same as ....

There are measures you can take to prevent someone dropping a shaft immediately into your claimed/walled area, firstly make sure your b/walls above ground enclose the said area below and another good tip, which I got from LadyV, was to place things to prevent a shaft being built above, this doesn't have to be large structures or buildings, just place objects, storage signs or log piles in empty spaces.