If you don’t want to join some group already settled in some location, you need to find some place where you will be able to live alone. Map is quite large so running every time for resources you need might be frustrating.

Tip: While you need to run somewhere unequip all your tools. You will be faster and your stamina while sprinting will drain at slower rate. Also you may want to turn on auto sprint (Caps Lock - your stamina will drain) and auto run (Num Lock). Just auto run and turn off sprinting till you regen your stamina. You will get at desired location a lot faster.

What you will need for sure if you want to test crafting:

-Wood – It’s needed for all buildings and fuel for smelting. Good to have forest close. You can carry up to 3 building logs at time and some building requires hundreds of it…

-Rock – if you want to build castle walls or anything from fortifications (or even larger building) you will need a lot. In other cases not necessary to have one close.

-Iron Ore – it’s good to have one close. Needed for better tools and for nails that are used in most containers.

-Sand – needed for glass which is needed for window modules needed for larger buildings. No need to have one close, you can gather and recall.

-Clay – used for clay based buildings. If you have lack of wood in neighbourhood you might want to build clay based buildings. You will save wood for other things. Water is also essential in that case if you want to form clay into some more complicated prefabricates (for example brick). Most larger houses also required clay to be build. Keep it in mind if you want to crate small village.

If you picked location you like it’s time to build a hut. Mainly for recall ability so you can come back to location or respawn on your “property” (claiming land is not implemented yet).

So what will you need to create your home:

Tools:
a) Primitive Shovel – for flattering land for your home and gathering Clay (if needed)
b) Primitive Pickaxe – for shaping Rock
c) Primitive Axe – for chopping down tree
d) Primitive Saw – for chopping fallen tree into Building Logs and Boards (if needed)
e) Primitive hammer – to construct your home.

To create primitive tools you need:
a) Branch – just find some tree, click action menu and under forestry you will find “snap a branch” option. You can gather many from one tree.
b) Flint Stone – you need to find rocky area and after clicking action menu under prospection you will see option to search for eliglable stone. You can gather many from one place.
c) Wild Plant Fiber – it’s available everywhere where you see grass. It’s chance based so you can just stand still and under action menu – nature lore / Search for wild plant fiber – you can repeat action till you get desired amount of wild plant fiber.

Tip: When you mouse over on certain object (tree or ground) you can change default action by right clicking on it in action menu. Then all you have to do is just click left mouse without even entering action menu.

1. Craft shovel and pickaxe. Right click on branch in inventory and choose to craft tools. Construction menu will pop up with materials needed after selecting desired tool.

2. Terraform rocky terrain or dig a tunnel to get rock. Process all rock into Shaped Rock using pickaxe (right click on it to show menu) to increase Construction Materials Preparation skill. You need to rise it to 60 in order to be able to build smallest hut.

Tip: In skill group certain skill is available to you (except for first one) if you level previous skill to level 30. To rise certain skill above 30 you need to have previous skill level at 60 minimum. So if you need Construction Materials Preparation you need to rise Terraforming to 60 first.

3. Craft hammer. Pick a spot and try to build house. Right click on ground and under Construction Material Preparation select Construct. Depend on resources nearby you can build Tiny Shack (wood only based) or Plaster Tiny Shack (clay and wood based). Click build. You will see how your building will look like and what parts of terrain need to be flattened. If you already did some flattening you can check what squares left to terraform (will be red, while flattened will be green)

4. Now it’s time to flatten ground under your hut. 4x4 squares are needed. Start by flattering first one and when it’s ready stand on it and flatten next square. It will be flattened to same level as the one you are standing on. Proceed with all 16 squares.

5. Build a hut using procedure from point 3. Remember you can turn home around. I suggest doing it to pick up best side for door.

6. Now you have your building location and you need to gather resources needed to finish building. Click on it and they will be listed. After gathering some amount of resources you might be overburden. Just come back to your building site, open construction menu and drop required items into space under building requirements. Depends on what type of hut have you chosen you will need:

a) Tiny Shack
-10 Building Logs – you need axe and saw equipped. Chop down tree and then saw out building log (choose from menu) from fallen tree using saw.
-20 Boards – you need axe and saw equipped. Chop down tree and then saw out boards (choose from menu) from fallen tree using saw.

b) Plaster Tiny Shack
-5 Building Logs – you need axe and saw equipped. Chop down tree and then saw out building log (choose from menu) from fallen tree using saw.
- 150 Clay – find clay and using shovel lower terrain (terraforming) Proceed until you have 150 clay in inventory.


Tip: There are 2 types of trees in LiF: Softwood that requires logging 30 and hardwood that requires logging 60. So if you don’t see option to cut down tree under logging and you have 30 logging already you try to cut down hardwood tree. Choose another one. To increase logging from 0 to 30 you need to cut down bark from tree. Just find a tree an under logging action menu you have option for it.

7. You can build your hut with some resources already gathered or wait till you gather all of them. Equip hammer and just hit build in house crafting menu. Remember to finish house you need to stand outside of building area. If you don’t do that you will get message about space being blocked.

8. After finishing house right click it and choose “set as my home”. There is no message confirming it so I always click couple of times just to be sure… (you should get message “there is no room for you…”. That means you are already bind to that)

Congratulations :) You just build you first house.

All credits go to Kossako[lifeisfeudal.com] from the Life is Feudal official forums.