Devs: Lairs are wonderfull, nice job.

[Lumineux]

I've been testing them out on blight for a while now, and I have to say these things are awesome. The art is great, they are absolutly beautiful. I love the lighting effects in the essense room. Planning them out is a lot of fun, my only gripe being that if you want to go back and change one section a little bit, you have to first delete everything that is attached to it. The maze of tunnles makes builiding your lair feel like it is truely yours and unique. And you gave a good ammount of room inside them, I belive. Using just 45% of my lair space (on a 120x120x144), I was able to place a shrine, two tier 4 libraries (I'd build them for the look, if nothing else :)) a tier 4 essense room, a tier 4 smelting room, a tier 3 (I think) Stoneworking room, a tier 5 lair, 1 tier 4 silo, 2 tier 3 silos, 1 tier 2 silo, and 4 tier 1 silos.

The only thing I would like to see added, and it is probibly too late for this, is some "mirrored" rooms. They would be the same as their existing counterparts, but reversed so that the attach points would line up diferently. That, and also some spiral down ramps that would change the exit direction, instead of going in a straight line from where you entered.

All in all, excelent work, you are going to keep me busy for a week of playtime just designing the thing.

[oluviel]

any word on them making the hoard visable in there?

[Lumineux]

Last I heard from David, the hoard chambers were being held off untill they could make them reflect their owner's hoard.

[dorrin]

agreed.. very nice. baela is working on a walkthrough that will hopefully answer many questions several of us had last night on blight when she was on for a bit to help us.
the aforementioned "problems" .. i agree on both counts.. though it does force you to really PLAN. my recommendation to everyone when you first start planning your lair is to NOT click build for a while. take hours.. days to plan this out and make sure it'll work well for you. make sure you give yourself plenty of exits to work from so you don't have to delete whole sections to change one tiny thing, or if you do, make sure it's in the planning stage. ;) i suggest putting in 3-ways where you think a bend will be all that you need or a 4-way where you think only 3-ways are necessary .. just in case you change something later or want add something differently.
one of the biggest issues is making sure you _carefully_ plan out how you will go from layer to layer. open spirals are great for dropping down instead of having to actually circle around as you do with a closed spiral.. but they go forward and down.. they don't turn.. you definitely need to keep that in mind when planning. i never used a slope.. they take too much space, IMO.
grand halls are HUGE.. they're 96 x 96 x 96, which means your lair needs to be, IMO, at least 96 x 120 x 120 or so. the entrance point to your lair will determine how easily you can put it in, but you more than likely will not be able to put it in the top layer (layer 0).

hm.. i guess that's it for now. screenshots in a separate thread to come

[Dragoniade]

How about leveling the school for lair, with the new crafting nerf?
Good or bad?

[Goriax]

I've gotten to around 11 and I'm37% done with the first three way intersection.

[Valornyx]

I went to blight and bought a lair plot to play with .. I spent about 5 hours just playing with the planning window..

I love the artwork. Especially as a lunus - all that lava flowing eveywhere :)

The fact you can walk through your plan is VERY good. Well done on that. I can see that the lair that I build for levelling my lairshaping might well be very different to what I will eventually want for my home. I forsee that I will craft to get my shaping up to L100 - and then start over to use High T rooms on the top level to provide quicker access to the lower parts of the lair.

The 3rd dimension makes lair planning a lot trickier that plots. I suggest (as others have) spending hours playing with different combinations of layouts and trying to have multiple connections and loops - to ease later changes in plan.

I did have an issue on one level that I could not seem to get a room to attach to an attach point - not matter how many times or in how many ways I redesigned the level. There should have been space for it to fit - but it just would not attach. The problem seemed to be below where the entrance to the lair is on Level 0. Although that area is not blocked out on the plan - it did not want to let me build in there on L1 - has anyone else had this issue?

Overall though - great job - hours of fun and entertainment - and that's just the planning :)

[Lumineux]

The problem seemed to be below where the entrance to the lair is on Level 0. Although that area is not blocked out on the plan - it did not want to let me build in there on L1 - has anyone else had this issue?

Yes, I've had the same exact problem, I made a post about it on the blight forum. No answer yet though.

[David Bowman]

There are two things that currently occur (that I know of) that puzzle people. 1) Why can't I put a corridor/chamber on level 0 or 1, when there is obviously room? and Why can't I put a corridor/chamber just below the entrance on level 1?

The answer is that you can't have a corridor/chamber that collides with the terrain or the entrance. The entrance is two stories tall, and descends to level 1.

Depending on your lair plot, if there are steeply descending cliffs that move past the level at which you are building, you won't be able to place a corridor/chamber there due to the fact it would stick out of the ground.

The interface doesn't currently display this information to you, so it can be puzzling.

David

[imported_peladon]

Dorrin Elder. The Wise are Wise and the wise are indeed wise, but the avatars of those that walk... they be sly and crafty both! And it hath come about that there be the magery they have made for the composition of crafting tasks, even while not waking in Istaria. And it strikes me that a thing or two be true.

If it be so that there be time for those that walk to think of craft while they wake not, then it may be so that there be time for draku that wake not to think of lair making. And if, as might be for a drake that be clan bound, there be one that doth build a lair that others have interest in, it might be that it was well for those interested to see and share and consider and mould that lair between their eyes and voices while not waking. That when the plan was done, it be done to their whole need.

And how might this be? It might be that one sly and crafty in the lands of the avatars did make a magery that allowed the thinking and thought building of lairs while not waking. And this would be a thing of wonder, for then there might be builded many thought lairs that a drake might consider, mayhap one that be built when young in laircraft, and one for when old, and those while taking the wind between those two. Or a young lair that yet allowed space and form for the old lair to be.

But I know not of any such magery. And this thing is not a thing mine avatar hath skill to do, and no doubt it be beyond the powers of even the most sly and crafty of those avatars to create such... and of course, I would not seek to have any take my words as challenge and prove me faulted... [:P]

[imported_Frith-Rae]

anyone have any shots of a mixed Lunus/Helian lair artwork and how that all looks mixed together :).

As this is what myself and my mate are really wanting to do - lava and waterfalls :).

[Nisse]

I managed to make a cool sort of checkerboard pattern yesterday, on one level, with t1 helian and lunus 3 and 4 ways.

PhotoBlog
Scroll down to the bottom for the newest images.

I wanted to mix both faction architectures from the start, and I've now decided on an alternating system--helian, then lunus and so on. I managed to get the t1 [or maybe it was the t2] halls to mirror one another, with each podium facing one another. It takes a bit of shuffling around, but it looks very nice.
My idea is to have helian type places on the top area, and then switch to lunus on the lower half, being that, as lunus uses lava, it makes sense to have it closer to the earth's core.

The beginning of making a lair is full of a lot of experimenting, learning the rules of how each chamber and hall can and can't be placed. So my advice is to make like you're a kid again and think legos :P

[dorrin]

sephir.. that was brought up in the construction forum as well... it would be very nice to have something outside of istaria that allowed you to plan your lair / plot.