Building mania: the workshop and smithy
As I’ve mentioned in my last post, I’ve been very busy working on Ravenstone. Based on the idea of a small medieval-like village, I ended up constructing three buildings: a workshop, a smithy, and an inn. These three buildings are the hub at the center of the deed; they are usually the first things visitors notice and I am constantly running in and out of them as I do my daily tasks.
You see, buildings/housing are a key feature of Wurm. They have the best security on a PvE server: if you lock your doors and all the walls have been completed, no one can get in unless you allow them to. Players also love to build them because of how customized they can be. They can be just about any shape you like, even donut shaped now (the size restricted by your carpentry skill). A single tile of wall can be made of either wood or stone, and can be a solid wall, a window, a single door, a double door, or an archway. Each wall can also be dyed any colour you imagine if you choose to do so. Inner walls can be used to create rooms within a building. And with the addition of multistorey, several different floor and roof types, and parapets/fences…it’s amazing what you can build now. Just take a look at this forum post where players are showing off their new buildings.
I’ve been having my own fun building as of late, and since this is my blog, I’m going to show them off. 😉
Ravenstone Workshop
Pre-1.0, the workshop was pretty simple. Just a 4×4 wooden building with stone slab floors, a bunch of bulk storage bins for raw materials, and some coffins for storing tools and other containers. (Coffins are one of the largest stationary containers, even if they are a little morbid.)
It wouldn’t win any awards for design but I was okay because it served as it was suppose to, as a place to work and store materials.
When version 1.0 was released, it was the first building that got a roof and floors. This is mostly because roofs and floors were so new that no one knew much about them, and I was okay with the workshop acting as my guinea pig. That and wooden floors and roofs were the easiest to make to start, based on my carpentry skill.
The roof began bothering me as soon as I finished it. Roofs have a pretty high slope which looks fine if the building is smaller or has more than one storey, but on a 4×4 single storey, it appears disproportionately large.
So eventually I got tired of how odd it looked, tore down part of the roof, and built a partial second storey with a small balcony at the front.
I’m much happier with the way that turned out. And the second storey is a great out-of-the-way place for my new oil barrel (to fuel the lamps off deed in my mine).
Ravenstone Smithy
While the workshop is completely enclosed, I wanted the smithy to be more open just like a real medieval smithy would be. Building it out of stone made the most sense because realistically, it’s a heck of a lot less flammable than wood. So pre-1.0, I built it as a 3×3 with arched walls along two sides and windows along with the other two. The windows are for gazing out at my horses while slaving away over the burning forges. 🙂
It looks rather messy because I was still working on organizing everything, so it was a dumping ground for my things as I worked.
After 1.0, I decided to build a small second storey, which will probably end up as extra armor and weapons storage, with a small balcony overlooking the horse pen. The stone slab floors that were added are quite gorgeous and go well with a pottery shingle roof.
So far it’s gotten the most comments and everyone seems to love it. I know I do as well. 🙂 I still need to set up some more armor stands and weapon racks on both the first and second floor to give it more of an armory-type feel.
The Twin Feather Inn at Ravenstone has really been a labor of love and deserves its own post, so expect that to come in the near future!