First of all this game isn't made for you to live on a big island with you and your 5 friends dying your armor and RPing being pirates.
You need to clan up... fleet battles are going to be a lot of fun with tons of people manning each ship... you need so many people to properly man a boat... and we got this terrible ARK mental block with all these kids wanting to build a little house and sail around on a sloop. Official servers probably aren't the place for many of you, and you need to
Depends of what kind of server you are on, but given that any small land claim as a solo on PVP would be wiped out by Chinese Pirates, let me give you a PVE tip that, based on my voyages, few people have thought of....
1) You an place a claim flag anywhere.
2) You can build anywhere within your claim flag.
3) If you bring enough materials, you can easily build a pillar (stacked floors) from the seabed to above the waves on which to build a happy home.
4*) I have not tested plac