Best place to start a village

[stevant]

Hi, I'm fairly new to this.

I was part of a village but now our leader is dead I wish to start my own peaceful farming village. Where would be best:
By water or around trees and stuff?

Cheers

[cloakblade]

I suggest close to water but not right on the edge of it. If you are planning on being peaceful farmers, soil quality is a great deciding factor. And don't forget you can build a crossroads to the water for purposes of travel.

[Saphireking65]

But do not build a Xroads leading inside, that's a one way ticket to being killed.

[SpiderJerusalem]

But do not build a Xroads leading inside, that's a one way ticket to being killed.

funny thing is, people actually do that.while they left summonable scents.
I don't get that

[Sevenless]

Location:

Near water, but not on it. 2-3 enders screen views away should be good enough. Keeps the casual observers away and you can build crossroads to transport out to water. Preferably you'll live at a dead end of the river system, and it won't be too small to limit your foragers.

Ideally you'll want both broadleaf and needleleaf forest terrains covered by your settlement . This is to grow firs (lumber/branches) and mulberries (silk) at native speeds instead of having one slower over the other. Terraforming is... slow to say the least, but by no means impossible. If you can figure out how it works that is (I have a hunch that forest types don't inter-convert, which may be why my mulberries still grow hideously slowly).

Another thing that's pretty critical for beginning villages is a cave. It makes that first nugget of metal so much easier to find since you won't need the hard leather for a minehole right away. Do remember though, wall it off seperately from the village. If it's inside, it gets its own gate. A one way crossroads leading inside the cave's palisade allows easy access without needing to leave such a critical flaw in a villages defense plan. Mining into people's unwalled caves is a much simpler way to attack someone than battering through their palisade. It happens a lot.

Resources to have nearby:

A huge thing with villages is resources. Do note though, the majority of decent resources have already been snapped up. As a result you'll have to aim lower, or deal with the absence of one or two resources nearby to find a place to live on.

Your daily water use (leather tanning/baking/drinking) is going to be very limited to what you can supply generally. Any good water you trade for goes to the occasional bit of awesome leather and for tree planting. Q40+ within reaching distance is a good thing to aim for, but Q30+ will do. 60+ water is tradeable on the forums but not overly uncommon at this point.

Soil, it's not hard to find Q30 nodes, don't settle on less. Settle on more if possible since it helps your farms get up to speed quality wise. Q60+ again is tradeable on the forums. You'll find tree planters from mid sized and smaller towns looking to buy this.

Clay, last but by no means least. Clay is... critical. If you find a Q60+ node, you can immediately ignore all the other requirements and do your best to live near it (but by no means on it, that's just inviting trouble). Q80+ clay is worth as much as a gold find, and it will hold its value slightly better than gold in the long run if I remember correctly. Q70+ clay is about the highest you can ever expect to see traded on the forums. Why is clay critical? It affects metal quality, baked goods quality, kiln quality, tree quality... the list goes on. Clay is the god of the quality push. For a small player's look at it though, anything over Q30 is good enough to live near.

Final verdict:

The ideal location is a mixture of moderate quality nodes, or settling near one high quality node and using it to trade for high quality resources from other towns. A proper town location takes a lot of scouting and preparation to find. For your first, the most critical thing is to not ignore the safety precautions. Your first town is unlikely to be perfect, but making sure it's not looted to death will certainly improve your game experience.

[DatOneGuy]

1)Read Jackard's Guide
2)Read Avu's Defense Guide (linked within Jackard's)
3)Somewheat near Swamp, Mountain, body of water, so that you are able to get to any of them within 5-10 minutes if you wish.
4)A decent sized area with no/few cliffs (to not disturb your palisade being made), and a lot of trees, so once your pali goes up it's all good.
5)Clay nodes nearby, decent Q water, decent Q soil (preferably built on).


There are so many things that matter that it's up to you to decide which you need right away (build on) and which you can wait for (extend to with banners and then crossroads).