No this is normal. The base is not located in the player spawn chuncks
Type the following command into the server console /tp (playername) 905 55 1026
Turn up your master volume its turned off by default.
I think the base being so far from spawn was a deliberate move by the author to prevent you from chunk loading your base without performing arcane rituals and sacrificing children....Or i mean grinding for weeks.....yeah, that's what i meant.
The water thing really isn't that bad, though the lack of a renewable snow source (other than meteorites that is) is nearly as troublesome as drinking leaves that require you to be hungry but don't restore any hunger. Sure the whole diminishing returns thing would kick in, but by that time if you haven't gotten to fresh water, you aren't prioritizing correctly. The thing I've come to like about the fresh water is that the bottles stack, so every few minecraft days I craft up 10 bottles (10 per lava bucket) and I'm good for a while, craft up 60 and you are good for ages.
Now if the game would recognize that I'm standing next to a lava block without me having to force block updates (grinding my cobble gen) I hate standing inches from lava dying of hypothermia.
The 2x2 oak drawers are broken, the compacting drawer works just fine, haven't tried the other normal drawers.
I admit I haven't caught the fish yet, but I've been quite far from the base searching for meteors (which aren't falling anywhere near my base) and the "ruins" aren't where they were last time. Does that somehow spawn only when you reach the quest, or was it removed/moved to the dungeon?