Lairs: Boy did I have it wrong

[Death-knell]

Last night I went onto blight and bought a lair. I spent a while trying to design my lair before I figured out I was really confused on how a lair was to be designed and built. I thought as you went down that ramp you could put caves off it.

<insert loud annoying buzzer here>

What I found after banging my head on the wall for a short time was that you start at the door and then go from there.


So I have to ask, how do you pre-plan your lair? Do I have to build it room by room? Or is there a way to layout in advance like you can on a biped plot?

[Goriax]

When using the planner youhave to start at the entrance and work your way inward. So the first thing you put down is whatever actually connects to the entrance, then put down whatever connects to that and so forth. I guess it's their way of making sure that you can actually get to everything -- no areas with no access to the outside. You can put as many chambers and corridors into the planner as will fit (just keep hitting the "+" button to add, hit the "-" button to delete after highlighting the room in the list of rooms). You also can't delete anything which would leave something isolated in the planner. At any instant every cooridorand chamber has to connect to something which connects to something and so forth until something connects to the entrance. It won't let you set anything else up.

Remember that you can actually walk into the plan and I STRONGLY recommend it. Get to see it all like it will be someday after you've hauled a small mountain worth of stuff to it. It was walking through the plan that really blew me away.

Don't hit the build until you've walked through the plan to your hearts content. Then you only see what's actually built, which initially will be nothing.

If you dismiss the planning window the plan immediately poofs and you'll be popped outside if you were in it at the time.

It was a bit tricky at times. I think players will be writing guides. For example, it appeared to me that halls of tier III and above required at least one level ABOVE any attach point even if it's an attach point at the highest level of the hall. Also, once you have several levels with stuff on them, when you add another chamber it can first be dropped down on ANY attach point of any level, so don't get worried if you don't see it immediately. Just scroll through the levels until you find it, then move it through the attach points until it's where you want it.

With a big lair plot it's possible to make a pretty impressive maze. I can see people getting lost in their own lairs. That would be embarrasing.

There are so many ways to hook things up that just getting it done is only the beginning. Then we need to talk what good design would be. Some dragons may want horribly complex maze like lairs which take forever to get to the bottom. A whole dungeon on their own lot complete with dragon :) . They could EASILY have such a thing and it'll be hard to avoid completely. I think I'm going to want one which is fairly easy to navigate and that looks to be harder. For my way, I think I need to have a hall in a central spot with stuff branching off of it (one branch leading to the surface). Of course big lots can have more then one hall.

[Varangaard]

I'm strongly resisting the urge to build a multi-level maze of the minotaur with a hoard room in the center, and creating something useful instead. [:D]

Then again, perhaps I'll create it to level up my lairshaper. [;)]

[Rhaiannon]

im planning on building a maze on the top two or three levels [:P]

[dorrin]

I'm strongly resisting the urge to build a multi-level maze of the minotaur ...

HA! .. i've been considering getting a second account for other reasons.. and if i do i will definitely consider making a second maze lair besides my crafter lair ;)

[Fridlekh]

It was a bit tricky at times. I think players will be writing guides. For example, it appeared to me that halls of tier III and above required at least one level ABOVE any attach point even if it's an attach point at the highest level of the hall.

I'd like to point out that this is a bug. It's either with the object, or the planning window code. Try again with the next exe patched out to blight ... that one will have broken silo access, but fix a number of other bugs... like how if you build a room with machines in it you break connectivity in your lair... that one's pretty bad...

Also should point out that the planning window won't show you if terrain intrudes into your lairbuilding space... You can't place a lair object in a position where it will poke out of the terrain, so be sure to survey the land where your plot lies before sending bugs about pices that look like they should fit but won't. Not all lairs will be able to make full use of the first one or two layers.

[Pharcellus]

Also should point out that the planning window won't show you if terrain intrudes into your lairbuilding space... You can't place a lair object in a position where it will poke out of the terrain, so be sure to survey the land where your plot lies before sending bugs about pices that look like they should fit but won't. Not all lairs will be able to make full use of the first one or two layers.

Then that is a serious problem for those lairs. They need to either be moved, or have the terrain adjusted so that it won't interfere. No biped plots are affected or limited by terrain, why should that be expected of Dragon lairs?

I can hear some pretty serious hollering going on when people find out that the lair they bought is smaller than advertised due to terrain issues like this.

[dorrin]

AGREED. baela explained that on blight friday night/saturday morning... but i lucked out with the lair i chose and can use about 4/5 of my layer 0. not so with many others...