Base Building Basics: Your First Camp

A good base is the difference between scrambling for everything yourself and having it made for you while you're off exploring. Let's get your first camp set up right.

Pick a good spot

Where you plant your Palbox matters more than beginners expect. Look for:

• Flat ground — building is far easier, and your Pals path around it better.
• Resources nearby — trees for wood, rocks and ore for stone and metal, ideally within the base radius so Pals can gather without wandering off.
• Water access — handy for watering crops and cooling stations later on.
• Room to grow — you'll add more stations than you think. Don't box yourself into a cliff.

If you like to plan before you place, our base planner lets you lay things out first.

Cover the core work jobs

Your base runs on work suitabilities — the jobs each Pal is rated for. Early on, you want at least one Pal covering each of these:

• Handiwork — crafting at benches (the busiest early job).
• Gathering — berries and materials.
• Lumbering — chopping wood.
• Mining — stone and ore.
• Planting and Watering — growing food.
• Kindling — powering the forge and cooking.
• Transporting — hauling finished goods to storage.

You don't need a specialist for everything on day one — a couple of well-rounded early Pals cover several jobs between them. As you grow, though, dedicated workers make a huge difference. The strongest Pal for each job — say Solenne for handiwork, Anubis for mining, or Jormuntide for watering — is ranked in our workforce tool, which sorts every Pal by whichever job you pick.

Not sure what a Pal you've caught is good at? Every entry in the Paldeck lists its work suitabilities.

Keep your Pals fed and happy

Your Pals work hard, so look after them:

• Feed them. Keep a well-stocked feed box and grow or cook food nearby. Hungry Pals slow down and get cranky.
• Watch their sanity. Overworked, underfed Pals get stressed and stop pulling their weight. A hot spring or rest spot helps them recover.
• Give them a bed. Pals that work all day need somewhere to sleep, or they'll burn out.

A happy base is a productive base. If a Pal seems miserable, it usually needs food, rest, or a job that actually suits it.

Don't overcrowd

It's tempting to cram in every Pal you catch, but a base has a worker cap, and piling on more Pals than you have jobs (or beds, or food) backfires. Signs you've overcrowded:

• Pals standing around with nothing to do.
• Food disappearing faster than you can grow it.
• Sanity dropping across the board.

Keep a tight, well-fed crew that covers your jobs, and park the extras in storage until you need them. Quality over quantity, every time.

Where to go next

Get your jobs covered, keep everyone fed, and your base will hum along on its own. When you're ready to optimize, run your Pals through the workforce ranker to slot the right worker into every job — then come holler about your dream setup.