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How to Tame a Ladybug in Smalland: Survive the Wilds encampment
Image via Merge Games

Best Places to Build Your Base in Smalland: Survive the Wilds

You can't just build it anywhere!

Smalland: Survive the Wilds is an open-world survival game that allows players to experience the world as part of a race of tiny people that live beneath the Earth. Similar to Grounded, players in Smalland: Survive the Wilds will have to beat back vicious insects, forage for food, and learn how to traverse the forest’s massive, dangerous landscape. Download Smalland in its early access phase now if you want to play the greatest survival game of the year!

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Just like in any other survival game, players will need to build a base in Smalland. There’s a wide-open landscape full of potential building locations in the forest, but which locations are the best for bases? If you want to know where you should build your base in Smalland, then just keep reading!

Best Places to Build Your Base in Smalland: Survive the Wilds

There are innumerable places that you can settle down in Smalland, but not many of them are very safe. For example, building your base on the ground is usually not the greatest idea if you’re trying to avoid predators, especially if you’re new to the game. Building ground bases isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s definitely something you should avoid if you can help it.

If you want to build your base in the safest area possible in Smalland, then you’ll want to build it in a Great Tree. Great Trees are special trees in the game that are perfect for building bases! You can easily recognize which trees are Great Trees because they’re massive and have tons of mushrooms growing out of their trunk. Additionally, there will be a Gnome Effigy at the base of each Great Tree. Interacting with this Gnome Effigy will allow you to claim the tree as your own personal base!

Building your base in these huge trees will ensure that it’ll be kept safe from predators, especially the nocturnal insects that come out to attack at night. In addition to this, there are elevators (yes, elevators!) at the tops of every Great Tree, so getting into and out of your base is not only efficient, but it’s also fun! Great Trees are the absolute perfect places to build your base in Smalland.

Great Tree in Smalland Survive the Wilds
Image via Merge Games

Related: How to Get Chitin in Smalland: Survive the Wilds

Where Can You Build in a Great Tree?

Great Trees may be massive, but surely there are only a few suitable spots where you can build a base, right? Wrong! These trees are so massive that you can build almost anywhere in them! Once you reach the top of the tree, there is a large, flat area where a base can be built, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just this space.

You can choose to build your base in the flat center of the tree, or you can build it on any one of its many branches. You can even build your base down at the base of the tree if you really want to, though you won’t be as protected from predators (and you won’t get to use the balloon elevator, which really just takes all the fun out of it).

Perks of Building Your Base in a Great Tree

The fact that Great Trees are literally made for making bases in Smalland isn’t their only good feature. Being protected from insects is another great perk of Great Tree bases, but there are still many more advantages to building your bases in Great Trees!

Another perk is that once you’ve claimed a Great Tree for yourself (by talking to the Gnome Effigy at its base), you literally own that tree. This means that if you invite some of your friends to your kickass treehouse in multiplayer mode, they won’t be able to open your doors, interact with any of your workstations, or, most importantly, loot any of your stuff!

Great Trees are literally the safest places to build your base in Smalland, from predators and other players. Although your tree will be private by default, you can make it public if you want, as long as you really trust your friends.

Additionally, bases made in Great Trees can be moved easily. If you ever decide to unclaim your Great Tree, your base inside of it will automatically disappear. Don’t worry, though! It’s not gone! Your base and everything inside of it will reappear the second you claim another Great Tree, no matter how far away it is from the original. This awesome feature makes moving bases incredibly easy!

In conclusion, if you want your base in Smalland to be in the best, safest location possible, then build it in a Great Tree!


Smalland: Survive the Wilds takes big adventures to a whole new level! If you love the idea of being tiny and surviving in a regular-sized world, then you should definitely check out Grounded by Obsidian Entertainment.

Grounded is an insanely entertaining game that forces players, who have been shrunk to the size of ants, to survive in a vast backyard. It’s the perfect game for fans of Smalland: Survive the Wilds! Check out Gamer Journalist’s Grounded guides for more information!

Author
Image of Allysen Pierce
Allysen Pierce
Allysen Pierce is a freelance writer with a passion for gaming who has been a part of the Gamer Journalist team since May 2022. Her main passions are horror games and dating sims (especially combinations of the two), but she has been known to play literally anything that is put in front of her. Her current favorite games include Skyrim, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Cult of the Lamb, Slaughter Horse, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. When she's not playing games (or writing about them), she can be found reading, baking, watching horror movies, or playing with her cat.