A good first home in Enshrouded doesn’t need to be big. It needs to be roofed, warm, and organized, and it should hold your crafters without sprawling across your build zone. The house below fits on a footprint of 3 by 5 foundations. It has three floors: a basement carved into the ground, a main floor built around the Flame Altar, and an attic with enough room for at least five NPC beds. Every step uses Springlands materials and the Construction Hammer, and a few voxel tricks that make the work much faster.
Quick answer: Raise the Flame Altar one step on a foundation block. Lay a 3×5 Rough Wood Block floor around it, dig the basement by placing and then removing foundations, frame the house in stone, and roof it with Stone Shingle Roof Blocks.
Starter base layout and materials
The house uses the standard 4M block size. The main floor is 3 foundations wide and 5 long, and the altar sits in the middle of the main room. A level 1 Flame Altar gives you a building area of 40m×40m×40m, and that is plenty for this house, a porch, and a fence around it.
| Level | Purpose | Main materials |
|---|---|---|
| Basement | Extra room, stair access | Rough Stone Block floor, wood walls |
| Ground floor | Altar, stations, chests, fireplace | Rough Wood Block, Rough Stone Block |
| Attic | 5+ NPC beds, storage | Rough Wood Block ceiling, Shroud Wood stairs |
| Roof and trim | Shelter, eaves, awnings | Stone Shingle Roof Block, Plant Fiber Roof Block, Shroud Wood Block |
To place any of these blocks, you need the Construction Hammer and an active Flame Altar within range. If you try to build outside the zone, the game shows “Needs building area” or “Needs a Flame Altar nearby.” A yellow boundary line marks the edge of the zone. The Shroud Wood Block comes from Shroud Wood, so you need to cut a few Shroud trees before you can make the trim and stairs.
Raise the Flame Altar and lay the 3×5 floor
Flame Altars only snap to the ground, and you can’t lift one directly. A ground-level altar would end up sunk below your new floor, so the first job is to raise it.
Dig the basement with foundation blocks, not a pickaxe
Enshrouded builds with voxels, and blocks have no structural integrity. That means a foundation placed into the ground takes up that soil. When you remove the foundation, the soil is gone too. This is much faster than digging with a pickaxe, and it leaves flat, square walls. It is also the quickest way to cut trenches or level a path.
To finish the basement, lay Rough Stone Block foundations as the floor and put wood wall panels on three sides. Leave one long side as bare carved rock. It gives the room a natural cave look, and it costs nothing.
Frame the house in stone
The stone frame keeps the wooden house from looking flat. You build it from Rough Stone Block shapes: Foundation, Column, and Door Frame.
Ground floor walls, windows, and stairwell trim
Set every wall back one small block width from the stone frame. This gap is what lets the columns and trim stand out from the wall.
Stone Shingle roof with overhangs
A roof aligned exactly with the walls looks unnatural; real eaves extend beyond them. Disable snapping, then shift each roof piece outward and down by 0.5 to 1 full block beyond the wall. This house uses Stone Shingle Roof Block. Tarred Shingle Roof Block and Plant Fiber Roof Block produce the same result if you prefer another look.
Attic floor and staircase for NPC beds
The attic sits right under the roof, and it has room for at least five NPC beds plus nightstands, chests, and shelves. This matters because a crafter needs a bed under shelter before their recipes and dialog unlock.
Exterior details: stone window arches, thatch awnings, shutters
Each hammer shape has two functions: in its standard setting, it places blocks; in Remove mode, it takes them away. Make a large, solid wall, then select the small 1m or 0.5m single-block shapes in Remove mode to cut window openings, recessed trim, and arrow slits. Most of these features have no preset pieces in the game. The details below all rely on this method.
- Side window: carve an opening 6 blocks wide and 2 tall into the ground floor wall.
- Stone arches: remove the wood blocks around each window and fill them with rough stone blocks to make a rounded masonry frame.
- Baseboard: remove the lowest wood edge around the house and replace it with stone trim.
- Awnings: put Plant Fiber Roof Blocks above each window, then widen them by one block on each side.
- Window panes: place crafted Wooden Window Frame or Round Wooden Window Frame items into the openings.
- Shutters: set window frames upright into the wall on either side of a window so they look like open shutters.
- Sills: snap Crude Benches onto the stone ledges under the windows.
For the front door, carve a stone arch around the opening and add thin stone pillars on either side. Use the same frames, benches, and Shroud Wood trim on the attic windows. To finish the yard, run stone pillars and Wood Banister II fencing around the property and light it with Firefly Lamps. Window frames and Stone Wall Drains also work as railings. Lay them flat along a balcony edge and adjust them with the fine-tune controls to get styles the fence pieces don’t offer.
Build the fireplace with hidden torches and chimney smoke
Standing Torches give off rising smoke. If you hide one inside stone, the smoke still comes out while the flame stays out of sight. The fireplace sits in an alcove under the attic stairs, on the right side of the ground floor.
The same trick works as a standalone chimney. Build a hollow stone column, lower a Standing Torch into it, and seal the bottom part. Smoke rises from the top as if a fire were lit inside.
Interior layout: stations, Magic Chests, and NPC placement
Close in the basement stairwell outside with Shroud Wood walls, a flat ceiling roof, and stone arch trim. Inside, the altar stands in the middle of the main room with chests behind it on Shroud Wood wall supports. The left side and back hold the Workbench, Kiln, Forge, and alchemy stations. Keeping all the stations in one area, with storage close by, saves you from walking back and forth.
With Magic Chests, crafting stations and your own crafting menu can draw materials from storage anywhere in the base. Sizes include Small, Medium, Large, and larger options. Open a chest and choose Enlarge to upgrade it; if you have the materials, it grows to the next size without losing its contents. Quick stacking puts carried items into a chest that already contains that item. Disable Receive Quick Stacking on any chest that keeps taking items you want in your hotbar.
The Summoning Staff places Survivors, Assistants, and Villagers, who roam unless you change their settings. Set Roaming Range to as little as 2m to keep a crafter close to their station; 0m is no longer available. Ensure each craftsperson has a bed under shelter. Place animal beds clear of walls to prevent animals from getting stuck.
Comfort and the Rested buff: how to confirm the base works
The Rested buff raises your maximum stamina and makes stamina recover faster. To get it, you need shelter (a roof over your head) and warmth from a fire or the Flame Altar. Comfort decides how long it lasts. When the house is working, your status bar shows Sheltered, Warmth, and Comfortable, and Rested comes with a countdown timer.
Items from the same Comfort category do not add together: three different Basic Comfort chairs still contribute just one. To increase your Comfort level, place at least one item from every distinct group:
- Comfort Furniture – Basic Comfort
- Comfort Furniture – Illumination
- Comfort Furniture – Carpets
- Comfort Furniture – Wall Decorations
One skill in the skill tree adds up to six more minutes of Rested, at 2 minutes per level. That is enough to keep the buff after you die, even if you only rest in a small dug-out shelter.
Farm building blocks from abandoned settlements
Building a whole house takes a lot of stone. You can gather ready-made blocks in bulk from deserted settlements and enemy camps.
The same farming method works wherever a material occurs in the world, once you have enough to make its largest block shape.
Building block and lighting reference values
All items here have Common rarity, and blocks can stack to 5,000. Use the Construction Hammer to place blocks while close enough to a Flame Altar. The recipe column gives the quantity listed for each recipe and names the station used to craft it.
| Item | Recipe | Item set | Unlocked by |
|---|---|---|---|
 Rough Wood Block | 100 — Workbench | Springlands | Wood Logs or Workbench |
 Roughly Cut Stone Block | 100 — Workbench | Springlands | Picking up any basic block |
 Plant Fiber Roof Block | 50 — Workbench | Springlands | Plant Fiber or Workbench |
 Tarred Shingle Roof Block | 50 — Workbench | Springlands | Tar or Workbench |
 Blue Luminescent Block | 100 — Workbench | Springlands | Luminous Growth |
 Bone Block | 100 — Workbench | Springlands | — |
 Castle Block | 100 — Workbench | Veilwater Basin | Shell Limestone |
 Highly Polished Stone Block | 100 — Workbench | Kindlewastes | — |
Rough Wood Block is the main material for the floor, walls, and attic. It is also a reward from many quests, including A Destroyed Roof, Bridge Construction Report, and Fortified, so you may get a free supply before you craft any. Roughly Cut Stone Block is a foundation stone, and you unlock it by picking up any of the basic blocks, such as Rough Wood Block, Plant Fiber Roof Block, or Stone Shingle Roof Block.
The two Springlands roof blocks share the same recipe number and stack size. Plant Fiber Roof Block makes thatch, which suits the window awnings. Tarred Shingle Roof Block is tar-treated wood, if you want a darker roof than stone.
Blue Luminescent Block emits light in darkness. Pick up Luminous Growth to unlock it; it can be found in caves and stacks to 250. It makes good basement trim when you’d rather not use torches to light the room.
For the Illumination comfort group, these two lights are worth knowing:
| Light | Comfort – Illumination | Crafted at | Unlock condition |
|---|---|---|---|
 Candle | 2 | Workbench | Player level 5 or higher |
 Throne Room Floor Lamp | 6 | Carpenter | Crafted under a roof, Gold Ore |
You can make the Candle early, as soon as you have a Workbench. The Throne Room Floor Lamp gives three times as much Illumination comfort, but it needs the Carpenter and Gold Ore. Comfort doesn’t stack within a group, so place whichever of the two has the higher number.
Once the roof is on, the fire is lit, and an item from each comfort group is placed, the house is done. It has a basement, a workshop around the altar, and an attic with beds for five crafters. As new materials unlock, you can swap in sturdier blocks one shape at a time without rebuilding.
