What do you look for in a claim?

[TeckXKnight]

I prefer settling near an area away from rivers, preferably with an untouched forest. If I can find a cave that's too small to be dug in, I covet that for cheese purposes. If you can chip a wall then the cave isn't small enough to be 100% secure. Somewhere near a swamp and a mountain if that's at all possible. It can be tough to find all of those features conveniently together so in order of priority they'd likely be: No rivers, forest, mountain, swamp. This will net you lots of meat, leather, forageables, and curiosities. It's not difficult to temporarily convert a small patch to grassland to spawn some animals to tame to get your cows and chicken coop going. Now you have a healthy supply of just about everything and you can grow without worrying about getting raided.

This is all assuming you're not worried about quality. When it comes down to it for the end game, everything else takes a back seat to getting a high quality resource node.

There is one big exception for me. If I can find a lake that has no rivers leading into it I will claim the entire lake and wall it off as my personal toy. There is really no strategic benefit to this, but I think we all have that one feature we'd love to capture and if you can think of one for yourself, then break the rules and get it no matter what.

[Jomme]

I don't think you'll find an unclaimed cave though. It was just what you do at the start I guess.

There are loads of unclaimed caves you just need to look around a bit, which incidentally is good advice on it's own. Try to settle away from any activity, away from area's with lots of abandoned claims and away from the river systems.

A cave is a good start enabling you to grow more rapidly out of sight and hopefully giving you access to iron, keep a small farm above and pali it. Once you find the metals for your brickwall you can then expand above and wall it in if that is where you decide to settle.

Good luck.

I'm in the middle of every large village in HnH I think, but I'm not sure. Might explain why I haven't seen any unclaimed ones.