u/Golerath

G'day everyone~ Week 45!!

Wow, did i have an intense week... So... much chiseling was done.. too much maybe? haha... Hope everyone enjoys this week's offering!

So.. A little about this place.. This is the great Bottle Tree, very few of these exist within the Letherial many had been destroyed harvesting the sap which has healing and medical properties that made it highly sought after. But much like real life... Money, exploitation and progress at any cost saw this species almost brought to extinction.

That was until a healer discovered a method of extracting the sap without killing the trees, Though it is a much slower method and yields a lot less upfront it is sustainable. The first tree she discovered this method of harvest is the very tree you see here. This bottle Tree has become something akin to a holy site for healers who come here on their journey to mastering their craft to receive their first healing catalyst which is made from the branches the bottle tree periodically sheds. While the origin of the healer's craft came from science it has taken its own path and evolved over the many years to be more of a spiritual in nature looking at the balance between progress, and sustainability.

Healers often train here to learn 'Balance' between healing proactively, reactionary and preventive.
Healers must learn when to use their barriers and regenerative spells, when to react and use their big heals that heal a lot of health but draw the ire of the enemy if used too often and  lastly dealing damage and debilitating status' to the enemy to lessen the damage the party receives. A famous saying is "A quick fight requires more effort but is more conservative but a long fight requires giving it everything." people have pondered the sayings meaning each having their own interpretation of the phrase...  But to many it basically means.. "If i contribute to killing my target faster, the less resources i consume.. if i focus solely on healing the fight lasts longer and i consume more resources" this is the key lesson taught at this sanctuary.

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Well it has been a crazy week got lots done.. i have a few little bits of cave wall to finish below and then this area is done!! I will be heading north next to region 3.. This area is home to the abandoned clay pits which has become a bit of a mire.. and also has the main road into the quarry pit which used to have Goliath sized trucks driving along it bring debris, ores and stone out of pit before taking it to the crushers to be broken down and separated for various uses. The big trucks, recycled for their parts are now long gone but the wide roads that remain serve as a reminder of their massive size.

Well that is it for this week~ hopefully wrote that all in at least a readable fashion haha... After I post this I will be going back to finish that last little section of the cave so starting Monday I am in the new area!! YAY... I loved making this mountain but it was honestly a far larger task than I initially had planned. What was meant to be a simple path onto a grassy plateau evolved into the mountain with winding paths around and through it leading to an awesome tree hidden at its center. It is honestly fun to see a plan change and evolve as I build it and as crazy as it is likely to sound, It was almost like the mountain spoke to me and said it wanted me to build it exactly this way. My plans no longer mattered; the project had taken a will of its own using me to shape it into the form it desired. Or more plausibly I just need more sleep? who knows..

Anyways thanks all for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the pics! see you all next week for week 46~

See you soon~
-Golerath

G'day everyone~ Exterior of the mountain is DONE~~ WOOHOO!!

Posting early yet again because it seems to have become a habit now to write these at 5am(my time) so may as well post it when i am done, Really wish there was a scheduled publish function for posting.

How is everyone doing this week? Hope it went well for you all! This week for me was chaotic.. Got a new Graphics card for my PC, Cleaned a lot of dust out of my old case... in places i just didn't think it would be... waiting for new GPU and installing it / updating / cleaning PC etc.. Chewed up a lot of my time i would've otherwise spent building, but.. I did get the exterior finished at least!

With the Exterior done i can focus 100% on the interior caves so hopefully this coming week i can fully finish this mountain and finally move to a new area of the zone. But with its completion i feel like calling this area 'Falornaris Quarry' is a bit of a lazy name.. while i could just give it a name... I actually would love the community to help me come up with a name instead..

What i would love to see;
- Something serious
- 'example' Quarry will be the name, so it needs to flow nicely together.
- Something dramatic.. Sounds strong, dangerous, while this zone has its beauty its not exactly safe.. it is quite a dangerous place ravaged by frequent dust storms that block the sun.. unless you're on higher ground.
- Something that either nods too or directly influenced by Australian culture, history, dream time tales even.. if you don't know much about Australia this may be a perfect excuse to look it up and see some of the cool wildlife and history we have here.

Can't wait to see what suggestions i get. Please feel free to either comment or message me on here or you can send me a message through discord with you ideas, i would love to hear them.

So with that all said i guess that's me for the week, Looking forward to everyone's comments and suggestions i hope there are some good ones... I don't want to call the region "Quarry Mc Quarryface Quarry' hahaha... so please be serious! I will see you all next week, Stay awesome!

See you soon~
-Golerath

G'day everyone~

Early post yet again haha... (i need sleep) But another week done and this one was both a headache and a interesting one, This week i decided my chiseled cliffs needed some caves and well here we are. Between a dying GPU and loss of progress a couple of times (due to GPU) I still managed to put something worthy of sharing. I will keep this post short and reply to any comments after i wake up, Bed time for now haha.

These caves slowly wind through the mountain and lead to this zones Lorestone and a really cool old tree that once sat atop this very mountain. You will get to see these my awesome plans in future weeks as i slowly build it all. I had tried once before to develop a concept of chiseling caves around week 13 when i was working on 'Letherial Western Fields' at the time i had concluded it was possible but i had not yet developed the skills to do it myself.. I think that has changed now i am very impressed with the results! I also created some lovely gum trees to give a touch of Australia to the zone. I placed the various trees around the area and they really transformed the area completely changing the initial vibe of the zone shown in previous weeks, Please let me know what you think~

Special thanks to everyone who commented on my post last week! all the comments really mean a lot to me and honestly gave me the energy to push through all the issues i had this week, It may take a few days until i get my new GPU but i will try my best to deliver another week of insanity manifest.

See you all next week and I hope you all have a lovely week ahead of you.
-Golerath

G'day everyone~ week 42 lets go!!! I'm going to be super brief today because i am exhausted.. So here we go~ As you may know they say a picture is worth a thousand words... so by this logic here are 20,000 words... Enjoy.

This was a lot of work... and is a prime example of the quality i want for what i refer to as 'phase 3' detailing. Posting early and going to bed, will reply to comments when i wake up, good night and sweet dreams!

G'day everyone~

What a insane week that I've had... I think i stared into the eye of the beast.... and the beast ran off scared... Am i the beast? the Abyss? i don't know.. but these are the questions i asked myself as i delved deep into the chisel induced madness. I really went above and beyond the crazy terraforming this week... but i think it paid off.

So the areas for this week i worked is know as the carving fields, its a region of the quarry littered with small blasting silos and large granite slabs waiting to be carved into desired shapes. The small Silos serve two purposes they store small explosives and water which as used together with special stone cutting saws to process granite into whatever shape the customer desires. The carving fields are littered with chips, fragments and dust from the granite processed here and are major contributor to the dangerous dust storms that plague the area whenever the wind picks up. Before the collapse this was mitigated by a large irrigation system that sprayed water all over the region keeping the dust storms to a minimum,

While this area was originally for granite carving a large portion of the quarry area was converted to a strip mine upon the discovery of the Solstone fragment buried in the ground. so the area also became a bit of a dumping ground for rocks that needed to be crushed into gravel which become on the regions top exports. Between the chalk laden rock and granite the quarry also supplies through the surrounding forests have ample supplies of limestone and Clays with natural gypsum deposits. This was the main reason a large portion of the quarry was change into a large processing plant for refining and mixing concrete powder and exporting by train all over the Melos-Xarcus colony (Letherial, Dheril, Torhjem and Melos-Xarcus).

Going forward to next week i am going to mostly just continue doing what i did this week and finish off this area before heading further north to the clay pits and if time permits for on the quarry pit. I will be like building the cement factory last as it requires a lot of planning and i am unsure if i want to burden myself which a major project project but i do have ideas. I also put in a sample of a screenshot frame that I've been trying out, let me know what you think!

Well enough of my rambling.. Hope you've all enjoyed this weeks preview and can't wait to hear all your loving comments and encouraging words.. I could really use them after this weeks slog of relentless clicking haha.

See you all next time~
-Golerath

G'day everyone~

Week 40, wow... Only twelve weeks until we hit the big 1 year mark wow....  So some of the places this week you may have seen glimpses of last week as I had started this zone a day ahead of schedule since I finished my bridge early. This week I went a little crazy with the detailing but I estimate I've completed about 30% of the zone so far which in my opinion is amazing progress!

This zone has been a bit of an evolution really. I was originally going to have a barren quarry for the whole area but  it has slowly evolved to include a logistics area and later on a cement factory... I have started excavating the main quarry pit as well which I hope to finish doing within the next week or two. I've tried to think about how players would traverse and explore the region too and while the main road goes from A to B fairly simply, I have decided to try and include as many 'distractions' as i can to entice people to explore..

This Region suffers a lot of dusty storms and winds which over time have slowly coated everything in a fine sand like gravel... over time this dust has built up and with every random windy storm the region gets more and more covered in dust and gravel. The origin of these dusty gravel storms is unknown but it is speculated to not be a natural occurrence as the storm seems to be isolated to this very region..

Due to the dusty storms adventurers without the proper equipment risk getting lost or injured in the storms and as such the area is usually avoided by everyone except for trade caravans who have no choice but to travel through the region.  The wildlife in this region tends to be mostly boars and goats eating the small shoots of grass and shrubs that manage to poke their way through the gravel laden dust layer. This region also has the same nighttime horrors that infest most of the world, however during severe dust storms these creatures will venture out any time of the day. Because of this danger a system of sirens are set up around the region to alert travellers to seek shelter if a major dust storm is detected.

Lastly a special shout out to QuantumFluctuation who is helping out with this project by chiseling the tracks, trains and shipping containers you've seen used around this zone. As we move forward in the project I will slowly be bringing more people on to help speed up development. QuantumFluctuation has assisted me greatly with this by developing assets / props which I can then use in my zones to speed up development. While I am able to do this work myself, it became very evident during my building of Falornaris Ruins  that i require help sooner than i planned and if that help could ease my biggest time consuming task (prop creation) then i can focus on zone design and arranging the props in a way that makes the zone feel lived in and believable. Also I am currently looking for somebody who would like to model and rig some mounts for this project. I will be posting some help wanted notices around but if you are interested please send me a message and we can discuss details.

Well enough rambling for this week! I will do my best each week to point out any assets that I have not created myself but using them has heaps of fun and really saved me a lot of time which I feel you can all see the results of. However there is lots and lots and frankly too much chiseling ahead for me haha.. but i think its paying off the zone looks amazing! Hope you all have an amazing week and see you all next weekend!
See you soon~
-Golerath

G'day everyone~

Big day today, finally finished the first pass for Falornaris Valley which means we can finally move ahead to a new zone! So for this week i finished the bridge linking Falornaris ruins to the Quarry, Starting next week we will be in a new area! This week's picture consist of both picture of the bridge and some conceptual work I've done for the new zone, Please enjoy!

So the bridge for this week was a design recommended to me a couple of months ago and is loosely based upon a bridge in Queensland, Australia, The "Walter Taylor Bridge". This build was a little tricky hardest part for me was working out the best way to build the suspension cable and iron work sadly to fully replicated it faithfully would've taken me a couple of weeks so i opted for a simpler design that hopefully remains faithful enough to the original. This part was a little annoying to build and make it look right but i think after all my messing around i finally managed to get it to look quite good.

Next weeks new zone is known for now as "Falornaris Quarry" it was originally going to be the final part of Falornaris valley but while i was terraforming / preparing the zone for next week it really started to feel like its own unique area so i feel like we should treat it as such. This week I thought for a little added treat I would also include for everyone a few conceptual screenshots of a little work i did in the vision boarding / planning stage of this zone. I think i am happy with the overall design direction and appearance of the zone, Would love to hear what you think.

The quarry ground Is going to be the hardest part of this zone, It consists largely of dusty sands and gravels. During my planning for the types of materials in the area i remembered this gravel quarry i used to sneak into as a child, i remembered how unstable, fun and challenging it was to climb up and over the piles of gravels. This ultimately gave me a really cool idea that i may hate myself for this in future haha.. But Gravel should really flow and spread out not sit in a perfect cube like every other solid block so.. with that idea in mind i painted the land and followed the shape of the land to create a really nice sloping hill which i personally think is the highlight of my work this week.

Anyways that is enough of my unstructured rambling for today, I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and have an amazing week. Please let me know what you think of my gravel landscaping, curious for peoples feedback.

See you all next week~
-Golerath

G'day Everyone!

Week 38 let's go~ This week i starts construction of the opera house in Falornaris, This grand building was the pride of joy of Falornaris featuring one of the four major 'Sol Stones' which was carved by local artisans into a giant arch that reaches over the opera house.

This particular 'Sol Stone' was originally located in the old quarry and was painstakingly excavated and carved into blocks which were then carted to the opera house and carefully stacked into the arch you see today. 'Sol stone' is a incredibly strong yet light weight material that will bond to itself when exposed to sunlight. This posed a unique challenge to the builders of the opera house as the stones had to be kept dark until the Sol stone became brittle enough to cut and then carefully carved into blocks, separated from one another and put back out in the sun to regain its structural strength. The stones were then transported to the opera house and were added to the structure at night time when the stones would not instantly bond together.

It took Falornaris 20 years in total to mine and build this grand project, Once completed people travelled from all around the world to see the great theatre which hosted events from all around the world. The locals could see what shows were being shown by checking the banners out front of the opera house. Each banner sat directly a clock which would display the start time of the shows.

After the dam broke and the survivors were combing the ruins an adventurer exploring the ruined opera house set all the clocks to 2:45 to match the main clock tower. This time was the exact moment the tragedy of Falornaris happened and sits as a constant symbol of remembrance.

This was a rather fun build but i really need to decorate the space, for this week i will bounce around and decorate the place. Next i want to start the bridge that links the quarry and Falornaris together.. I am hoping i can get both of these done this week so next week we can finally move forward to a new area. I have a concept and design in mind for the area a mix of marble quarry design and scattered chunks of 'Sol Stone' that have been mined.

Anyways Enough of a ramble haha!! Hope everyone has had a lovely week and look forward to seeing you next Sunday!

See you then~
-Golerath

G'day everyone~

Little early again but oh well. Here we are, Week 36 and I am start to finally see the light at the end of the town...right...? maybe i am just deluding myself haha.. This week i spent a little time between building and planning ahead what i want to build. I also used the time to decorate some 'bald spots' from previous weeks that needed detailing (such as some rooftops).

The current plan i am slowly building towards is the ruined opera house, I have already starting planning out the foundations and the ruins beneath it but i guess it will take me a few weeks to complete everything up to a point where i can start building it properly. I also finished most of the parking complex.. including the flooded lower portions which will later hide some secrets (maybe).. I have also worked out and planned my approach for the upcoming quarry area which is exciting i think that i have some good ideas for how i want to build it.

In other news i may have found somebody to help out with development of some new creatures for the world.. Nothing set in stone yet but still exciting none the less. Everything is very slowly but steadily coming together which is a nice change of pace, still unsure of the final form this server will take but either way will provide a fun unique land for people to explore.

So going forward for this week i want to finish the ruined roads to the opera house, and fill in some more of the ruined building, rubble twisted forest are leading up to the opera house. Afterwards i would like to finish the foundation so the week after next i can focus on designing and building the still standing portion of the the opera house.. i think it will be a tricky build as i cant easily build the entire thing at once beforehand.

Anyways, thank for stopping by again. I look forward to any comments you may have and I hope you have a lovely week. I will see you all next time!!

See you later~
-Golerath