Terraforming

Terraforming is how a player sculpts the environment around his or her character. Virtually all actions performed can be considered, to some extent, to be terraforming. There are however certain terrains and biomes which are harder or impossible to terraform. For example, Mountains cannot be raised or lowered in height through digging or surveys. Forest biomes must be cleared of Trees and Stumps before you can build. the three tiles adjacent to any water biome cannot be terraformed.

Note: Certain actions, like raising or lowering land in particular, have some build-in edge checks that come with a directional caveat. Or, as some (unchecked) example, on the border of a claim: On might be able to raise/lower land on its North & East edge, but not on its South & West edge (without criminal actions active).

Terraforming (Biome)

Terraforming by the game itself

• Forest ground is actively maintained by trees. Forest ground outside the range of any tree will decay to Grassland over time. (Range: <= 9 tiles, center to center, assuming circle)
• Dirt or plowed tiles will over time decay back to the forest or grassland tiles adjacent to them. (General terrain creep. Blocked by paved tiles.)
• Trees on forest ground will over time spawn the same forest terrain around them. (Range at least 3 tiles around tree. Random)
• Trees on non-forest ground will spawn a generic wald terrain.
  • Tree-spawned terraforming is not blocked by paved tiles, unlike with general terrain creep.
    • (its unclear if growing trees are better at terraforming spawning than mature trees)

Plowing

Adventure > Landscaping > Hand Plow

Requires the Farming skill to perform.

This command turns normal ground into Plowed Dirt. This is only possible on Forest and Grassland Terrains. It does not work on swamps, mountains, mudflats, snow and beaches.

Notes:

• Plowing by hand requires excessive amounts of Stamina, 25% per tile. A character will be too tired to plow when Stamina is 29% or less.
• Plowing with a Wooden Plow is much faster and takes less Stamina
• Plowing with a Metal Plow is the fastest and takes the least Stamina
• Plowing doesn't affect plants or objects on the plowed tile.
• It is recommended to surround fields with paved stone to prevent spreading of other biomes over plowed field.

Plant Grass

Adventure > Landscaping > Plant Grass

Requires Farming skill to perform.

This command converts a tile into Grassland, this also works on Cobblestone. Each tile has a very small chance of spawning Grassland wildlife or herbs to forage.

Requires 5 seeds of any type (Plant-able non-seed objects such as Hop Cones, Carrots, Beetroots, and Onions do not work.)

Stomp to Dirt

Adventure > Landscaping > Stomp to Dirt

Requires Farming skill to perform.

This command converts any eligible tile into Dirt

Terraforming (Shape)

Any terrain level change will change all effected tiles into dirt.

Digging

Adventure > Dig

The Dig command lowers the level of most terrain except beaches, mountains, snow and caves and generates a resource depending on the terrain.

Terrain	Resource received
Beach	Sand
Shallow Water	Ball Clay
Mountains	Stone
Forests and Grasslands	Soil and Earthworms
Mudflats	Acre Clay
Caves	undiggable
Swamps	undiggable

There are two manual digging(or raising) modes.

• Vertex mode: Which is the default mode which targets the nearest grid-point of the clicked tile.
  • Tech-note: Due to how the game is setup. The NW corner of a tile is always directly related to the given tile itself. The other corners of a given tile belong to the other neighboring tiles, which gives rise to inconsistent behavior per corner bases on what the game finds on those other tiles.

• Tile mode: Activated by holding CTRL when clicking a tile. This tries to lower the whole tile to the lowest corner.
  • It will start lowering the highest corners first by one unit, and works its way downwards that way. The caveat here is that this process will completely stop if a corner is encountered that can't be lowered (even if there are other corners that still could be lowered. Same applies to raising.)
  • Tech-note: This tile mode bypasses some of the vertex mode inconsistencies. And as such allows for changing the height of corners that are otherwise inaccessible with the vertex mode. (IE: its the official dev's workaround for there vertex mode limitation.)

• A normal sloped tile (no cliffs) can have a maximum difference of 2.0m between adjacent/connected corners. Allowing for something like this.
• Digging is considered hard labor, and as such has a minimum energy requirement of 2500.
• Manual digging without using a land Survey always removes just one dirt, or resource, per character dig action.

• When using a land survey:
  • Digging Soil by hand removes 1 dirt per action. (very slow)
  • A q10 Wooden Shovel removes 2 dirt per action.
  • A q10 Metal Shovel removes 4 dirt per action.
• Shovels are not just significantly faster. They also drain less stamina (assuming per dug soil unit).
• As of world 11 it is now possible to dig up items discarded by other players, similar to fishing.

Raising ground

• Raising ground by itself makes no usage of shovels. And don't costs any stamina. Nor has it a minimum energy requirement.

• Vertex mode: To raise some grid-point by one unit (0.1m). Hold some dirt on your cursor and click near your target grid-point with SHIFT+Right-Mouse. The dirt on your cursor will be refilled from your inventory.

• Tile mode: Will level a whole tile to its highest corner. Click with the dirt on a grid-tile with SHIFT+CTRL+Right-Mouse. This will use all needed (if available) soil in your inventory to level the tile.

• When using a land survey:
  • Raise the survey target height so there are no points to be lowered. (Survey always starts to dig away the points above the target height)

Survey Land

Adventure > Landscaping > Survey Land

Clicking and dragging will select a area of a maximum of 31x31 to be leveled. Right clicking the flag will open a menu to adjust the desired height to level to. Stockpiles of dirt, stone, and ore within the survey will be used to raise the level of the ground after all necessary digging is done.

See Survey for more detailed information

Removing Cliffs

Cliffs can be removed by raising the cliffs-bottom until the cliffs height becomes less then 20 units.
An easy way to do this is by placing a survey like so:

For creating cliffs see Embankment Scaffold.

Laying Wood, Stone, Brick, and Metal

Lay stone

Adventure > Landscaping > Lay Stone Paving

Requires Stone Working skill to perform.

This command converts any eligible tile into Paving at a rate of 1 Stone to 1 tile

Lay Brick

Adventure > Landscaping > Lay Brick Paving

Requires Masonry skill to perform.

Much like Lay Stone, this command converts eligible tiles into a brick floor at a rate of 1 Brick to 1 tile.

Each type of Clay gives a different colour of brick when fired in an oven, and this is reflected in the color of the brick floor. Appear magical with a yellow brick road, or give off an imperial air with black bricks!

Lay Metal

Adventure > Landscaping > Lay Metal

Requires Metal Working skill to perform.

Much like Lay Stone, this command converts eligible tiles into a metal floor at a rate of 1 Metal Bar to 1 tile.

Lay Woodchips

Adventure > Landscaping > Lay Woodchips

Requires Carpentry skill to perform.

Much like Lay Stone, this command converts eligible tiles into a woodchip floor at a rate of 1 Block of Wood to 1 tile.

See Also

• Paved ground