A home base gives your character a return point in the saved dungeon. From there you can claim connected rooms, bring in residents to defend them, and use the services of secure claimed rooms across your territory. Some rooms produce resources, and permanent improvements let you shape the place as you grow.
Get a Map
First, find or craft a Map and keep it with you. The Map opens the dungeon map UI, and Place Claim Marker is available only from the current room's panel there. Without a Map, you cannot start a claim.
Gather what you need
Find a discovered, claimable room with no living enemies. You need 50 unspent XP to place a Claim Marker, plus 2 timber, 2 masonry, 1 textile or leather, and 1 light source to finish it. The room also needs a free side slot for the unfinished marker.
Keep those materials where you can reach them. The marker will take only the cards you choose to put inside it. It will not pull supplies from your inventory or equipment.
Place the marker
With your Map, open the dungeon map and select your current room. Choose Place Claim Marker in that room's panel. The 50 XP is spent when you place it. If you later destroy the unfinished marker, that cost is not refunded.
Fill it yourself
The unfinished marker is a container. Search it and donate the required cards: two pieces of timber, two of masonry, one textile or leather, and one light source. It accepts a card only when that card fills a requirement still open. One card cannot fill two requirements.
You can take donated cards back before building. If you destroy the unfinished marker, everything left inside is lost, so empty it first if you want to keep those supplies.
Build your base
Clear any living enemies from the room before you finish. When the marker has all its materials, choose Build. Completion costs 1 Action Point and consumes the donated cards. The completed marker stays in the room, which becomes your return point when you enter this saved dungeon again.
Use Interact on the completed marker to manage your territory. Search still opens its contents.
Claim the next room
From base management, choose a discovered, enemy-free frontier room connected to one you already own by an open north, east, south, or west passage. Expansion spends gold and unspent XP. The price varies with the room's size, distance, utility, hazards, and hostile spawn strength.
A living enemy makes an owned room contested. Clear it to restore its services, production, construction, improvements, and resident management. Residents can help defend connected territory, and a secure claimed Forge, Smithy, Blacksmith, or Workshop serves the whole base.
Keep a route open
Walls block the passages your territory uses to stay connected. If you seal a claimed room's last route back to the base, its connected benefits pause until the passage is reopened. If your character dies, the base is abandoned and purchased residents are lost. The construction remains for a later character to find.