Even in early access, RuneScape: Dragonwilds has a pretty large map so it can take a while to choose the best base location in Dragonwilds. As in all survival crafting games, living close to the resources you’re collecting most is a big consideration—water and food in particular for Dragonwilds.
Death is common in Dragonwilds—not only because of the dragons—and running back to collect all your stuff is a chore. As you explore new regions, you’ll spend a lot of time dying and running back since you can’t craft the gear to survive those new areas without first harvesting materials from them.
With the help of Lodestones, you can establish multiple bases throughout Ashenfall for easy access to raw materials and quicker trips to Vaults and dungeons.I’ve picked out the best base locations in Dragonwilds for most major regions so you can start thriving instead of just surviving in RuneScape: Dragonwilds.
Best Bramblemead Valley Base Location
The best base location in Bramblemead Valley is right in the heart of Bramblemead Village, exactly where the Wise Old Man tells you to build a shelter at the start of the Dragon Slayer main quest.
The abandoned village isn’t exactly a desirable view from your starter home, but it has some benefits. Try building your first base right in the elbow of a crumbling stone wall so you can kite those overly aggro cows, for instance.
Bramblemead Village isn’t anything special, but it’s full of Flax, which you can use to create Coarse Thread on a Spinning Wheel. There’s also a ton of wildlife nearby, so you’ll never run out of food or materials like Animal Fangs or Animal Hide. Remember to always grab some water from the river just down the road so you’ll never go thirsty. It’s also a great spot to farm Cooking XP.
Best Fractured Plains Base Location
The Fractured Plains are the first difficulty spike in RuneScape: Dragonwilds since metal gear is ideal for this zone but you can’t harvest the Copper or Tin you need to make that metal equipment anywhere else. Set up a base and a bed in the Fractured Plains so you can respawn closer and have easy access to ore deposits.
The best place to set up a base in the Fractured Plains is marked on the map below. This is arguably the best base location in all of RuneScape: Dragonwilds, and it’s where I’ve personally chosen to make my permanent home in Ashenfall.
There are several Copper and Tin Ore deposits within walking distance of this spot, and you can get to a bunch of them without dealing with any enemies. While this base is located on a cliff, there’s a broken path that you can use to safely drop down to the lower levels of the Fractured Plains. You can also use the Windstep spell to climb back up this path, and there are Copper and Tin deposits along the way.
Once you’ve geared up, though, you can find even more Copper and Tin guarded by Garou enemies just a short distance to the east. You’ll need the Windstep spell to cross that gap back to your base, which means you can pick off those Garou without them reaching you. With strong enough equipment, you can also make a short trek south to the Whispering Swamp to stock up on Clay and Swamp Tar.
This base location also has a pond for unlimited water and a respawning Stone blockade that you can mine pretty often so you can stock up on rocks for all your crafting needs. That blockade also hides the entrance to a Vault, so this base location really does have everything you could ever need. To top things off, this spot has one of the best views in Ashenfall. You can really flex your creative muscles and build your dream home here.
Best Stormtouched Highlands Base Locations
The Stormtouched Highlands crank up the difficulty with stronger enemies and environmental hazards like lightning strikes, but you won’t have to spend too long getting beaten down if you set up a base near its eastern edge.
The border of the Stormtouched Highlands is the best place for a base. It has access to a ton of Iron Ore nodes (which is the main reason to visit this zone in the first place), and you’ll also find large flocks of sheep and rams. Most crafting recipes at this stage in the game call for Iron Bars and Padded Cloth, and this base is the perfect place to farm those.
The Stormtouched Highlands are actually quite small compared to other biomes like the Fractured Plains, so there’s no need to set up a base further into the zone since you’ll only be going that deep for Vaults or quests. This base is more than good enough as a farming outpost for this region’s primary resources Iron and Granite.
Pop-up Camp locations
While I’ve described three permanent base locations, the best base location in Dragonwilds will always be the one that gets you closer to the resources you need while keeping you safe from threats.
That’s why pop-up camps deserve an honorable mention. They’re a true godsend for players trying to explore the most dangerous areas of Ashenfall. If you carry a Vault Core and some basic resources in your inventory when you go out, you can plop down a Lodestone and construct a small temporary outpost wherever you want.
Since you can just delete the Lodestone and get all the materials refunded, you can essentially have unlimited fast travel in RuneScape: Dragonwilds as long as you’re okay with reserving some carrying capacity for that hefty Vault Core. Most of the bases on this list started out as my temporary fortifications to make gathering materials less of a headache, so don’t sleep on this Lodestone trick.
It’s not really worth setting up a permanent base in a place like the Whispering Swamp or Bloodblight Swamp, for example, but you still need to go to these regions every now and then to gather specific items or complete some quests. All you need to do is chop down a tree or two for some walls and place a Lodestone nearby and you have a bonafide base of operations!
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