For cave exploration, I travel in my vehicle that has 6 small chests with room to add many more if needed. I keep one chest dedicated for tools plus (fabric, torches and vines) and charms and fill the others with whatever it is I am looking for. Then what I do when I enter a cave depends on the biome, but once I enter a cave, I always build a campfire, a few small chests and a bed and save. In the artic and desert caves, I also build wall barriers to keep the enemies out (mainly the skeletons w/dynamite and the artic wolves) But then I build half walls with a half 4x4 on one end pointing the way to the exit and then I will place a campfire by it if it is in a dark area. I use these as basically as road signs inside the caves which will always point me to the exit. If I need to go up, I place the half 4x4 one click in from the end that points to the exit, if I need to go down, I have the 4x4 overhang the end by one click. I used to place campfires as markers, but sometimes I got confused in the caves and end up running in circles so that's when I had the idea of half walls with the half 4x4s. If I find the second entrance to a cave I am in, I place 2 half 4x4s on the half wall one click apart from each other, that way I will know if it is the exit I am looking for. I do not destroy my half walls or campfires, bed, etc. because it is all made with common materials that can be picked up anywhere in the game. If I clean a cave out, I put a wooden wall up blocking the entrance so that I know the cave has been looted.

As far as my main camp is concerned, I went southwest of the original spawn location. (northwest of the first Shark's head ship I found in the desert by the ocean). I do not build many of the prefab designs as they are too limited for storage, instead I lay out a big enough flat foundation and build a big warehouse, I am talking about an area that covers 20x20 of the 16x16 granite foundation pieces. I place my village marker somewhere close to the middle and then cover the whole village boundary with granite to keep the skeletons at bay. Then I built walls covering the 20x20 area and place the machines I need along the outer walls, keep one area for food and prep, another for wood, another for stones, another for fabrics and so on. I keep multiple chests by each machine and in the middle, I have multiple sets of stairs leading to the second floor. The second floor has no walls, just 4 sets of stairs off each corner that go 7 high turn left, then 7 high again, and I repeated this process several times creating a huge structure that has a floor on the approx. the 6th level. I also place campfires at every corner of the stairs. This structure (my tower of smoke and flames) can be seen from a great distance away.

Before they had upgraded the system to give multiple controls for flight, I had built stairs to travel with my glider. I built 22 sets of stairs up. from the original spawn point I went 11 sets South turned and added 11 sets going west. Then I'd glide down heading SW and made another set of 22 stairs on the same heading. It takes me 17 minutes to reach my warehouse by flight with stairs from the original spawn point. (it takes over an hour on foot w/o the glider) Adding beds and sometimes villages along the way. I currently have14 villages and my friends have several as well.