Best Of

I am not in the current alpha, so I can't comment on the current rewards, but I am definitely and 100% in the camp of people that want to be able to level from 1 to 50 on good quests, with rewards giving decent XP and glint, gold, titles, cosmetics, recipes, materials etc.

The crafting recipes can be single-use recipes for good equipment, so artisanship is still front and center in the game.

@Vaknar

Sometimes I worry my posts are a bit too theory heavy and lack specific comprehensive examples, so I ran my post through chat gpt to come up with an area concept that reflects some of the things I mentioned, and thought it sounded pretty cool, enjoy.



🌑 Zone Concept: The Weeping Hollow

📍 Setting Summary:

A gloomy, sunken forest nestled in a crescent-shaped valley, constantly shrouded in mist. Once home to a reclusive sect of moon-worshippers, it was sealed off centuries ago following a catastrophic event known as the Lament. Now it’s overrun by strange flora, ghostlights, and corrupted wildlife.

This area evolves over time, reacts to player choices, and contains deep lore hidden in its terrain, making it a narrative sandbox for exploration, discovery, and role-play.

🧱 Core Concepts from the Post on Display

1. Worldbuilding / Narrative Integration

🔹 Visual Lore & Structure:
The forest layout itself follows lunar geometry — winding paths mirror crescent shapes, and ruins are arranged around a ritual basin in the shape of a full moon crater.
Statues of a three-faced moon goddess appear, each face turned toward a different cardinal direction — hinting at philosophical divisions among the ancient sect (Truth, Memory, and Mystery).

🔹 Layered Narrative Access:
Early on: Players find tablets and murals hinting at a ritual to “drown memory in moonlight.”

Later in story (or via exploration): They learn the “Lament” was a failed ritual to erase a collective trauma — the goddess divided into aspects as punishment.

The more players uncover, the more their understanding of the forest shifts — it’s not a cursed place, but a spiritual scar.

🔹 World-state storytelling:
If a player sides with certain factions, statues begin to "weep" starlight or blood.

Interacting with a certain hidden shrine unlocks a hidden history, changing dialogue in future quests across the world. NPCs may now recognize the player as a "Lament-Touched."


2. Mystery and Discovery

🔍 Non-linear Exploration:
The mist changes dynamically — obscuring and revealing new routes based on time of day, season, or player attunement.

Day: Wildlife aggressive, few landmarks visible.

Night: Ghostlights appear, statues rotate, secret glyphs glow.

Full Moon Event (monthly): A door in the hollowed tree opens to a hidden sanctum.

🧠 Knowledge-based Gameplay:
Puzzle shrines scattered in the zone require interpretation of moon phases, statue orientation, and lore clues.

An abandoned observatory on a hill lets players align its telescope to the glowing craters to reveal glyphs on nearby trees. These glyphs unlock an optional class-specific skill if deciphered.

🧩 Environmental Interactions:
Certain rare herbs only bloom under specific moonlight cycles — they can be used to brew elixirs or unlock alternate dialogue options in key storylines.

A rare creature, the Velumbra Stag, can only be summoned if players lure it with moon lilies planted during a prior seasonal event — encouraging long-term mystery-solving.


3. Atmosphere

🎧 Audio-Visual Integration:
Ambient audio includes whispering wind that changes pitch with proximity to hidden lore markers.

Leitmotifs evolve with player progress: a soft harp theme becomes more dissonant or hopeful depending on story paths chosen (e.g., embracing the memory vs. erasing it).

Lighting is volumetric, diffused through fog. As players solve more mysteries, the fog starts to part more frequently, letting in beams of moonlight — giving the sense that the forest is “responding” to the player.

🎨 Theming:
Visuals support the theme of half-remembered history — half-built bridges, statues with missing faces, trees growing upside-down.

Optional role-play tents exist for players — e.g., they can meditate at shrines to receive visions that influence story arcs, even if they’re not on the “main path.”


🧭 How It All Comes Together in Different Player Journeys

🧙‍♂️ Player A: The Scholar Path (Truth)
Focused on learning the forest's history.

Solves puzzles, finds the sealed library under the lake using moon glyphs.

Discovers the true nature of the Lament and shares it globally — this causes the mist to thin permanently for their server, changing visibility for all.

World perceives them as a “Revealer.” NPCs treat them with reverence, and certain items cost less or become unlocked.

⚔️ Player B: The Purger Path (Control)
Wants to purge the corruption and harness power from the Weeping Hollow.

Sides with a fire-worshipping order that believes in cleansing the land.

Burns down one of the spirit groves. Mist recedes temporarily but angers the Velumbra Stag, who now appears hostile in future encounters.

This creates dynamic conflict: future players must choose to appease or destroy the beast — affecting future seasonal events.

🌙 Player C: The Role-Player (Mystery/Memory)
Focuses on immersing in the mood, meditating at moon shrines during full moons.

Unlocks secret dialogue options for key NPCs in far-off cities (thanks to hidden memories gained in visions).

Over time, becomes a member of a secret roleplay-only cult of the Three-Faced Moon.

Special cloak reward only available through this long-form spiritual RP path.


🧩 Final Layer: Systemic Interdependence
The map is designed to reflect all of this: layered topography with fog/mist effects, persistent weather conditions, landmark visibility lines, and timed events.

The zone’s design encourages return visits under different world-states, with multiple optional storylines and character build effects tied into the area's mysteries.


✅ TL;DR
The Weeping Hollow showcases:

Worldbuilding via lore-rich landmarks and layered history.

Mystery & Discovery through exploration, hidden systems, and player choices that change perception and access.

Atmosphere via coordinated audio-visuals, emotional theming, and symbolic layout.

And most importantly, all these elements interlock dynamically, reacting to player agency, faction alignment, roleplay, time, and story progression — just as the original forum post envisions.

no fast travel pls ;3

@Vaknar

Here are some follow-up questions for those who haven't specified on them in this thread:

What kinds of landmarks or terrain features make a zone feel memorable to you?

What kind of biome-specific gameplay would help tie things together for you?

I think the main components involved in answering these questions relates to:

- Worldbuilding/narrative integration
- Mystery and Discovery
- Atmosphere


1. Worldbuilding/narrative integration:
2. Mystery and discovery
3. Atmosphere:
Overall:

Do you like big, dramatic features or more subtle stuff that you discover as you explore?

Both




Some fun references if you are interested:

SpaceWolf wrote: »

For me, the most important part of level/setting design is environmental storytelling. As I'm exploring, I want the things around me - whether great or small - to inform the 'backstory' of a given area relative to our perspective as players.

Let's use Metroid as an example:





https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/metroid/images/1/1e/Torvus_Bog.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20230521011448

The first two are some art for an area in Metroid Prime 2 - the third is an actual ingame screenshot of the same space, which the image share function didn't want to directly post. Figured I'd add all three since the perspective in each is a bit different.

The idea here is that this was once an industrial facility in a forested area, but the region was rapidly flooded after some drastic environmental shifts (a meteor impact about 50 years prior). By the time you explore it, the civilization who lived here has largely abandoned the area, leaving nature to slowly reclaim it.

Metroid Prime 2 is full of environmental storytelling like this - an area that was once verdant plains got scorched into a desert from the same meteor, there's ruined structures all around, and all in all you can feel the story-beats of the area without anyone needing to tell you anything.

The Metroid Prime series (particularly the first two games) rely on this type of environmental storytelling a lot. There's a lot of written lore you can find throughout its biomes, mind you, but all of it aligns with what you're already seeing all around you. Whether it's ancient lore from when a given area was inhabited, or more recent stuff detailing what led to things being abandoned, it all adds to the total picture.

For an engaging environment, I think it's important to think of the story of a given area first and then build your features AROUND that. Give players a sense of what happened, show them enough that they can extrapolate and theorize and make conjectures - and then have the deeper lore available for those who want to look.

The ruined structures in that artwork are a good example of "big dramatic features" I suppose, but the entire AREA they're in informs that "this was once a forest but now it's a flash-flooded bog"; there's evidence that the environment is still adapting to the new water levels everywhere. The cohesiveness is what matters the most.

As for biome-specific gameplay stuff - it's fine to let that just be emergent, in my opinion. For example, in the flooded forest, it's hard to move around and navigate a lot of the time simply because a lot of the places you can go are knee or waist-deep, lol. Finding equipment and other means to navigate the area more smoothly is as much of a challenge as hostile wildlife, since the whole area's going through some very rapid changes (on the environmental timescale, anyway). I would say, let biome-specific gameplay be emergent from all the other parts of an area rather than trying very hard to build an area around a specific gameplay mechanic. Worlds and environments are emergent things, and the difficulties we, as living things, have with them are emergent too.

but here is the problem if the areas ,biomes,POI or wahtnot lack anything interesting no one will care , i've went through the entirety of ashes map so far there is litearlly NOTHING that got me interested or made stop ,look and think "wow that looks really cool , i want to explore it" nothing , the only thing that had a hint of that was carphin but knowing there is nothing to do there other than just grinding mobs removed any of it so no one will care about the story of any place or would want to know more about it