Building a Shelter: The Location Must Be an Open Area and Free of Obstacles

[Shades]

Hello all,

It's been a long while since I first played, so I decided to try getting back into the game today and rolled a new character. I built a shelter for the game scenario no problem, but wanted to build another one close to water so I don't have to keep trudging back and forth. I'm getting the error message described in the title no matter how open the terrain is or whether my materials are in my inventory or on the ground. I've tried this all sorts of different ways with NOTHING in the immediate area around my character and I'm finally at a loss. I've tried moving away from the water, moving to completely different tiles, and I just can't figure out what I'm missing. I built a shelter once, not sure why I can't do it again. The only two things that have changed are the location and the fact that this next shelter isn't a quest objective.

I've managed to locate a settlement near a water source so I can work around this for a time while I get my character set up, but I'm eventually going to need to build more shelters.

I've googled this problem several different ways and can't seem to find anything like it. Any suggestions as to how I might clear this up?

[Privateer]

May sound simple but the first thing I'd suggest is a reboot if you are running windows.

This message should only be generated when trying to build on an occupied tile; ie; stuff on the floor, another item built there (fence), a harvestable plant growing there etc.

If you restart your OS and it still does this, something else is going on and a deeper look will help.
This is the first time I've heard this reported.

[Shades]

I went ahead and tried a reboot, still getting the same message after that and also verifying the integrity of my files on Steam. This does seem new, I played several hours last year (on the non-steam version) and don't remember having this much trouble with shelters.

I can email the  character's save files someplace if it's needed.

[Privateer]

Do you get the same message from other building menu items?

You can zip the save folder and put it here if you want, I'll take a look
http://www.tinyupload.com/

[Shades]

I can craft boards, but got the same message when I tried the kota. It looked like it was going to let me build both on the tile near the settlement, but I'd really like it to be closer to the water and when I moved back to that tile it went back to complaining about open areas and obstacles again.


Uploaded the save file under Mari.rar

[Privateer]

OK, got it, the reason you can't build there is your character is standing on a big sheet of ice.
Moved to one of the rock areas and build works fine.
 You can't build on water covered by ice

[Shades]

Ok. I thought I had previously tried on a non-water tile as well but I must have been mistaken. Probably thought it was snow or something. Thank you for looking into it, I figured I might have been overlooking something.