How does the degradation (wear / decay) of buildings work ?
For example, can a foundation (bedrock) that is covered by five foundations above and around it be damaged ?
Same question for walls, ceilings, pillars hidden under roofs, if they are hidden behind other pieces of buildings, like foundations behind walls…etc, etc. And often hidden and covered by a lot of other pieces of buildings, by many other foundations…
How does the degradation of buildings work ?
If you mean the timed decay, then yes - it affects all pieces that are connected together as one. They all stay, until it decays, by which time they all despawn. The more pieces are connected, the higher the maximum decay timer goes, up to the maximum of 144 hours (six days).
It does not take building design or “logic” into account - it’s a fairly abstract feature, designed mainly to deal with bloated servers and leftovers from players who have quit.
Unfortunately, the game performs so poorly that they’ve had to set the decay timer at six days, meaning anyone who goes away for a week for work or vacation loses everything.
Private servers might have a more reasonable setting, up to and including disabling the system altogether I believe.
So on an official server, we can not do a base as we want, it is necessary that all the building elements are visible and accessible directly to repair them, is that it ?
As far as the actual “decay” system is concerned, no that’s not necessary - as all connected parts of your base decays together. If you refresh the timer on a part of it, it’ll all refresh, even hidden parts. Note that you cannot “repair” decay as such, you just need to be logged in and close to the structure in question - you can check its status using the repair hammer (it’ll show a timer telling you how much life the structure has left). If the timer reaches zero, your structure will despawn.
If you’re talking parts that were damaged by AOE from (say) other players’ attack, I’m afraid I don’t know as I don’t enjoy the PVP experience.
So, if I understand correctly, it suffices that I repair with my hammer a single visible and directly accessible foundation (or any element of construction) to reset the degradation timer of all the building elements of the base (including those hidden under 10 levels of foundations, it’s an example), is that it ?
No, you don’t have to repair anything at all to reset the timer. You just have to be there with your character, logged in and close to the structure.
If your buildings are damaged through other means (actually have lower hitpoints) then that’s a different matter that doesn’t have anything to do with the decay system (timer).
Ah OK, I understand now, thanks a lot !
Just a detail, you have to be close to how many boxes compared to / close to a building element ? 5, 10, 20, 30 boxes…? (one box = one fondation for example)
Not sure what the distance is, actually. I can say that even with moderate playtime, and paying no particular attention to distance, my main base is always sitting at the max timer.
It’s outposts and such that can be a problem, I have to remember to visit those once in a while.
OK thanks.
So it’s less problematic than I thought.
I also noticed that you should place all buildings on foundations. I had a forge placed by itself on the ground and the forge actually had to be worked in order to increase the decay timer, and then the timer would go up by 10 minutes once every minute while it was worked.
Are you absolutely sure about that? Anything I’ve seen and experienced just requires you to be close, it being worked or not has had absolutely no bearing on decay. And I do have free-standing “work tables” occasionally.
Yes that is the exact behaviour I observed
Okay thank you for confirming it, that’s interesting. Not going to say you’re wrong, just that this is new information to me: in all the talks I’ve had with people (and everything I’ve experienced myself) about how decay works, I’ve never heard that a crafting station being “on” had any impact.
But then I can’t say for sure that I’ve tried this specifically (my freestanding stations might’ve been “close enough” to a foundation). Gotta test it at some point to see if I can see that for myself.
I think there are inconsistencies between different types of workstations renewing or increasing their decay timer when they are “stand-alone” …away from what the game considers a base both on the ground and also on foundations. I think some renew spontaneously when we are close and others need to be actively producing or burning fuel.
I speculate on this based on my early building attempts when I had some just decay away and others never disappear…
Example: my lesser wheel of pain not on foundations and PARTIALLY on foundations ( I misjudged when I replaced it after it despawned on me) needed me to have a thrall breaking on it to regenerate the timer to the maximum it would register
But my drying rack which was a similar distance from the house as the wheel of pain only needed me to stand near it for it to get to the maximum it would register
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