Impossible to make progress? or am I doing it wrong?

[TheGhost]

Alright so the ability to claim land is 4000 lp, slightly expensive but not out of reach. In the mean time while im attempting to save LP to learn it I have built a small 5x5 cabin, and filled it with containers and a bed. Making good progress during the day, it never fails that I wake up to an open fence gate and empty containers EVERYWHERE. At one point I had awoken to just an empty cabin all together. So I guess the question is how in the world do I make enough progress to learn the ability to claim land when EVERY morning I find equipment, food, and just everything being stolen. I fell in love with this game recently, but its incredibly discouraging to have this happen but be unable to prevent it.

[Zampfeo]

Don't do anything but get curiosities until you have yeomanry.

[SpiderJerusalem]

also don't settle right next to the river and store your important stuff( in your case leather, bones and curios) in the inventory when you log out

[TheGhost]

Yea it seems like im going to have to pack up and move, at first I thought living near the water was going to be convenient for myself but it looks like it just leaves me as an open target, decent amount of work put in to settling there, but I would rather take the time to move than sit here and get everything stolen all the time.

[btaylor]

Yea it seems like im going to have to pack up and move, at first I thought living near the water was going to be convenient for myself but it looks like it just leaves me as an open target, decent amount of work put in to settling there, but I would rather take the time to move than sit here and get everything stolen all the time.

If you have the Hearth Magic skill you can craft Dowsing Rods which you can use to find water holes to build wells on top of. That can solve the problem of living far away from natural water like lakes and rivers.

[Dava27]

I don't understand why he shouldn't live near water, of course it does matter if he can't build a wall there, but otherwise where is the problem?

[kralmir]

a lot of people use rivers, thats a lot of potential traffic that can stop by to kill you.

[Tonkyhonk]

remember that having a claim up does not do much unless you have a friendly ranger nearby to help you or untill you buy ranging (along with rage) to do something about it.

what you can do right now, will be
1) move to inland, far enough from rivers and other settlements.
2) try using a learnto. you can put one container and one spruce bed in there, sleeping in it should work like a claim iirc. put all the most valuables inside your inventory and less valuables inside the container and place it in the leanto, sleep in the leanto when you log out. thieves will have to have black skills and leave scents to steal them, though it does not mean it can stop all thieves. (or you could ask your friend to track scents later.)
3) as soon as you get yeomanry, start gathering materials to build palisades.

[brohammed]

remember that having a claim up does not do much unless you have a friendly ranger nearby to help you or untill you buy ranging (along with rage) to do something about it.

Protects against the only people who'd want to steal unprotected (ie shitty low level) items; newbies without thievery.

[TeckXKnight]

This just means you have some terrible neighbors nearby. There are tricks you can use that generally help dissuade petty thieves early on. If it's just some newbie stealing things, build your hearthfire in front of your cabin door. You can walk on your hearthfire, no one else can. HF requires vandalism to break, so the thief can only get through it if they want to leave a few vandalism scents and have 100,000 lp to buy up black skills. This is far from a perfect or permanent solution but it will work for a bit.

It should take you all of 20 minutes to get enough curiosities to buy yeomanry if you have a boat and sweep an area for ants, dandelions, dragon flies, and blue berries. Put a higher priority on getting boat building than yeomanry and keep your boat in your house when not using it.

If you're of a friendly nature and can find any of your neighbors, make contact and see if you have any nice ones who would be willing to help you store goods in their homes. Always test their friendship before going all out. Just small things like basic food, maybe a few leather pieces at first and if things work out up the ante a little bit more each time until you've established that they're good folk and plenty trust worthy. Contacts and friends mean everything in this game. Even for a hermit it doesn't hurt to meet others =)