I would like to know if this is normal: I built an animal pen right outside my house in game. I have been using the pen for days and logging once a day at night. Yesterday my pen decayed in 15 hours, and became abandoned 3 hours later. I had 3 pets on it that I left growing overnight. Everything was lost before I could log into game. The pen was not in a foundation but it was close enough to the house. The last thing I did was take food out of the pen and bring it to the house to cook. What can I do to prevent this decay? And is it normal to decay and destroy itself in less than 18 hours?
Best thing you can do is build a repair hammer and look at what you place, the more items connected the longer the decay timer. But for starters, yes, put foundations down first.
Build a 8 by 8 block foundation and place the pen on it to get the max decay time to avoid this issue
At the very least, run a line of foundations out to to the animal pen to connect it by proximity to your base.
But placing items on foundations is always your best bet.
I’m just going to leave this here for those who are interested.
Animal pens are odd like that, but it is always best to have foundations placed down first then place down the pen