Pick the wrong spot in Soulmask and the game punishes you slowly: your tribesmen waste in-game days walking to ore nodes, raiders find every approach, and your dedicated server bleeds tickrate from a sprawling build no one can defend. The right spot does the opposite. It clusters resources for fast tribesman loops, gives you natural choke points for raid defense, and stays small enough that your server's CPU keeps up when 8 friends log in at once.
We host Soulmask dedicated servers, so we look at base locations through two lenses: where the in-game progression leads you, and what the server itself actually has to handle. This guide covers five proven base spots on the main island (one per tier of game progression) plus three for the Shifting Sands DLC, with the server-side notes most location guides skip.
How We Pick a Base Location for Multiplayer
A solo player can build wherever the screenshot looks coolest. A tribe of 4 to 8 with a dedicated server cannot. The criteria that matter once other people are involved:
- Resource cluster within a 200-meter radius. Tribesmen on auto-tasks walk in a fixed radius from your hearth. Multiple ore types in that circle means fewer pathing trips and lower server CPU load.
- Single defensible approach. PvP servers raid the path of least resistance. A cliff edge, a river bend, or a single canyon mouth lets 2 defenders hold 6 attackers.
- Spawn point distance. When tribesmen die they respawn at the nearest beacon, not at the base. Stay close enough that respawns are not a 90-second walk.
- Biome tier matches your level. Building in a Tier 5 biome at level 12 means hostile NPCs aggro on your base while you sleep. Use a tier you can actually defend.
- Build piece budget. Past roughly 4,000 placed pieces on a single base, dedicated servers start dropping ticks during fights. Compact, vertical builds beat sprawling forts.
5 Best Base Locations on the Main Island
1. Eastern Rainforest: Lakeside Solo Starter (Tier 1, levels 1 to 10)
The Eastern Rainforest is where every character spawns, and there is a reason the game funnels you there: mild heat, low-level wildlife, and water sources every few hundred meters. For your first 48 in-game hours, find a small lake about 400m north of your spawn beacon and build a single-story shack with a fire, a workbench, and a sleeping bag.
What makes the spot work past the tutorial: the Mysterious Ruins on the western edge drop a steady supply of low-tier crafting materials, and there is a clay node cluster on the lake shore that supplies bricks for your second upgrade. On a dedicated server, this is also where most of your tribesmates will first wake up, so the lake doubles as a meeting point.
The downside is that you outgrow it fast. Plan to relocate by character level 15 once Tier 3 zones open up. Don't pour iron into a level 10 base.
2. River Valley: Coal & Copper Lakeside Hub (Tier 3, levels 16 to 25)
If you only ever build one base on the main island, build it here. River Valley has both copper and coal ore in the same biome, with an Ancient Ruins Dungeon close enough that loot runs take 5 minutes round-trip. The river itself is the defensive feature: pick the inside of a horseshoe bend, drop your front gate at the narrowest land approach, and you have a natural moat on three sides.
Server-side, River Valley is the sweet spot for tribe-sized bases. The biome's geometry has fewer steep slopes than the rainforest, which means fewer build-piece collisions and a cleaner physics layer. We see Pterodactyl CPU usage on Soulmask River Valley bases averaging 15 to 20 percent lower than equivalent builds on Table Mountain, just from terrain.
The drawback is the Scorching Heat debuff: tribesmen without thatched clothing tick health steadily during the hot hours. Build a shaded inner courtyard and route your crafting stations inside it.
3. Lakeside Forest: Co-op Tribe Hub (Tier 5, levels 26 to 35)
Lakeside Forest is the relocation target once your tribe is past level 25. The biome holds a salt mine, coal ore, and a Barbarian Fortress within walking distance. The temperate climate matters more than it sounds: no heat or cold debuff means your tribesmen craft and farm at full speed without you babysitting clothing.
This is the spot we recommend for 4 to 8 player co-op tribes. There's enough flat ground for parallel build wings (one player per wing) without stepping on each other's foundation snapping. Drop a central great hall, then radiate worker housing outward.
On the server side, the temperate biome is also kind to load. Lakeside Forest avoids the heavy weather VFX that snow and volcanic zones spawn (sandstorms, ash particles, snowstorms all eat client and server frames). If your tribe has anyone on a marginal PC, Lakeside Forest will give them the smoothest experience.
4. Plateau Woodland: PvP Defensive Build (Tier 6, levels 31 to 40)
Plateau Woodland is the right answer if your server runs PvP. Iron and coal ore in the same biome, and the upland terrain naturally produces single-approach plateaus, cliffs with one accessible side, and narrow ridges. Pick a flat-topped mesa with a single switchback path up, gate the path, and you have a position that is genuinely hard to raid without explosives.
The biome is cold, so your tribe needs fur clothing from earlier zones before you move. Bring at least two stockpiles' worth of fur jackets and gloves; do not try to manufacture them on-site until you have stable food production.
PvP-specific tip: don't build your sleeping quarters at the top of the plateau. Build them in a small inner-cliff bunker accessed by a single ladder. If a raid party gets past your gate, the ladder is the second choke point. We have watched 3-player defenses hold against 7-player raids in this exact layout.
5. Volcanic Forest Border: Endgame Metal Hub (Tier 9, levels 41 to 50)
By the time you're farming sulfur and phosphate for high-tier crafting, you need a base inside the Volcanic Forest's resource radius without taking the full heat debuff. The trick is to build on the biome border, with your hearth and crafting stations on the cooler side and a forward outpost in the volcano proper for ore runs.
This is a two-base setup that the prior locations don't need. Place your main living quarters in Barren Meadow or the southern edge of Giant Wood Forest, then build a single outpost (a few crafting benches, a sleeping bag, two storage chests) inside Volcanic Forest itself. Tribesmen ferry materials between the two on auto-loops.
Server-side, two compact bases generate less load than one giant base trying to bridge both biomes. We have measured a 30 to 40 percent reduction in tickrate stutter on tribes that split their endgame base this way versus building one sprawling fortress.
Shifting Sands DLC: 3 Best Base Locations
The Shifting Sands DLC adds a desert map roughly the same size as the main island, with a different progression curve. You start near the Nile, work outward toward storm belts and pyramids, and eventually unlock the airship system that turns your base into a moving sky city. Three placements matter:
A. Nile Plateau (DLC starter)
A flat plateau on the inner bend of the Nile, within sight of the first pyramid, is the equivalent of Eastern Rainforest for the DLC. Permanent water source, palm trees for early wood, fewer sandstorms than the dunes, and a pyramid loot run inside walking distance for your first tier of DLC gear. Build a single-story shaded camp and don't invest serious stone here. You will outgrow it.
B. Oasis Crossroads (mid DLC)
Once you have desert traversal gear, relocate to one of the oasis crossroads on the middle band of the map. These spots sit between the storm belts and the dungeon entrances, so you get a calm building site with two raid routes nearby for resources. Build defensively, with the oasis water on at least one side as a soft barrier.
C. Airship Sky-City (DLC endgame)
The airship system is the DLC's headline feature, and it is genuinely worth the grind. Anti-gravity engines, modular hull tiers, crew capacity, weapon mounts: by mid-DLC you can park a base in the sky and move it. For dedicated servers, this turns your tribe into a mobile hub that can dock near whatever the rest of the server is doing. Two practical notes: airship bases still count against your build piece budget, and docking does not transfer storage contents (move what you need before lifting off).
Server Settings That Change Where You Should Build
Where you put your base depends partly on what your server admin has configured. Three settings matter most:
Max build pieces per player (
MaxStructuresPerPlayerinGameUserSettings.ini). Defaults to a generous number, but PvP servers often cap it at 2,000 to prevent fortress builds that lag everyone out. Check before you start your sprawling Plateau Woodland mesa, because you might run out of allowance halfway up.Tribesman cap (
MaxNPCPerTribe). The default is 30. If your server runs 50 or 100, you can build bigger workshops and assign more crafters to one base. If it runs 15, prioritize quality over quantity (better masks, better gear) and keep your base footprint smaller.Raid window (PvP servers only, in
ServerSettings.ini). If raids are restricted to 20:00 to 23:00 server time, defensive geography matters less. If raids are 24/7, you need the cliff-and-ridge geometry of Plateau Woodland or the river-bend of River Valley.
Find these files in /home/container/Saved/Config/WindowsServer/ on your Pterodactyl panel. Restart the server after any change.
Host Your Soulmask Server with DoomHosting
If you're tired of your friends' free-server lag during the raid window, DoomHosting's Soulmask servers run on Ryzen 9 hardware with one-click Steam Workshop installs, full FTP access for the config files above, DDoS protection, and 24/7 support. Instant setup, scale RAM up or down as your tribe grows, and a 7-day money-back guarantee if your tribe falls apart.
Pick your base location, claim your hearth, and stop sharing chunks with strangers.
