Atralane's Antics: The Fort Lias Cathedral Project

Hello, everyone! It’s been pretty quiet on the Discourse recently. So I decided, with my final research paper completed, I’d spend some time starting a new project! As the name goes, we’re making a cathedral! My story behind it is that Lias was once a military fort that was abandoned, and later renovated into a cathedral.

So, I figure I’ll include the details of how I’ve been doing what you see in the project. Keep these tips and tricks in mind in your own constructions, as they can create some pretty neat things!

I wanted to try and make a sizeable project out of stone, but since I already made a castle and town, I figured I’d now try a composite wood-stone cathedral. I’m trying to avoid the mining glitch for this project, since placing floors in the world murders the pathfinder and lua. So that meant I had to collect as much surface stone as possible before beginning construction–multi-stories aren’t friendly to the game yet, either.

I literally spent 10 game days without even looking at the building window. my poor Hearthlings were forced to sleep outside for over a week, doing nothing but collecting resources. Hard times, but this project is bigger than anything I’ve attempted.

There were a few cute moments in the meantime. Yay, Tree Rabbits!

I’m happy to say that with no buildings, the status bar was kept nice and happy in the green. As you can see, I harvested MOST of the boulders in a mile radius from the camp. With no pathfinder issues, the settlers remember the rocks still needing to be collected and don’t waste anything! If you want to build structures out of stone in Alpha 6, it’s best to collect the materials beforehand so it’s counted in the stockpiles (since things will start getting busy, computing-wise).

So…giant building time? Giant building time.


This was the general floor plan for the first floor (though the final version changed slightly). As you can see, this construction has INDIVIDUAL ROOMS!!! However, the way I ultimately did that…

…was by constructing the corner rooms first and erecting their own walls like a regular structure. After that, I snuck floors between these corner rooms. To avoid having grass under the walls, you can start a floor away from the wall in question, then drag a section of floor under the wall while in RPG viewing mode. This will prevent the dashed gray border you get when designing a building from jumping to the top of the wall (which may result in errors later on). This way, all of the floors are also ‘recognized’ on the same height level and won’t interfere with later stories of the structure. The plaster walls were then added by drawing them individually between the corner rooms.

So, here’s the first floor, nearly completed at this moment! There were slight changes to the floor: the settlers enter through the door at the bottom, where the floor’s design is round and henceforth imperfect. At the opposite side, this becomes squared, representing the path to true enlightenment!

As you can see, I have begun placing the ladders to construct the second floor walls. The way to create the second floor is to draw a floor on top of the walls and roof the structure. Once done, erase the flooring on top of ONLY the first floor walls you want the second story on–after this, erect the walls of your choice. I used the outer perimeter of the entire first floor in my design.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Once the walls are erected in the plan, you are no longer tied to that floor you drew out. You can erase large gaps in this floor, or delete it entirely to have a hollow, tall structure. Here’s what the plan of my second story looks like:

Notice that I am also planning to include separate pillars within this main chamber. Simply do the same trick you did to build the second floor, but ONLY on top of this pillar. Since walls can only be built either on grass (or on walls with the trick above), I built the pillar like a normal structure and shaped the first floor around it afterwards.

So far, the status bar seems accepting of this project! I am ONLY building this structure currently in the game, to see if it can be completed.

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll keep you all posted on progress for the Lias project later on. See you later!

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your ingenuity and building prowess continue to boggle the mind… well done my friend … well done indeed! :smile: :+1:

can’t wait to see the finished product…

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That is very epic, I cannot wait for the finished project :smiley: I would even go as far as to include this into Stonehearth lore.

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Words fail us. You are truly a master builder! :smiley:

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I’m in the middle of end-of-semester work still, but I figured I’d send a picture to briefly show how the project’s progressed.

The entire second story has successfully been constructed! (Yay!) I’m hoping to actually do some more work on it near the end of this week. Stay tuned!

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Looks amazing, So excited for the future :smiley: Btw how do your worlds not crash

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Careful planning, a dash of MANLY SPIRIT, and lots of patience.

Also, I guess my computer runs Stonehearth well? I’m running off a laptop that’s a few years old. This is actually the smoothest multi-story project for me yet. And yet it’s the largest…?

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I didn’t know you were a doctor.

They don’t make stuff like they used to.

Cid wants your success.

Doctors have patients. @Atralane has patience.

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Rule #1 of punning is that the two words have to sound the same.

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Well, if we were to treat each game like a patient, then I have say–the IV must be set in place and the condition’s stable, because I seem to be getting little to no quavering in this project’s vitals.

(yay, again!)

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Hello again! While many of you have since departed Alpha 6, I remained just a little longer to try and see the Lias project come to fruition. First, may I suggest some musical ambience? As several of you may already know, one of my favorite video game series is Baten Kaitos–this song, “Divine White Bell”, sort of seemed to become the inspiration soundtrack as I tried to complete the cathedral. Feel free to play it as ambience, but just be warned–the organ’s a bit explosive.

So, continuing where we left off, I began work on the roof, corner spires, and grand chamber.


The grand chamber was actually less difficult to make than I thought. I left a hole in the middle of the ceiling, then constructed the walls and roof directly over the hole. When the walls were erected, they were placed on the rim of the hole, and I deleted the floor to create the open chamber.

And, after much toil and systematic exploitation…

The Fort Lias Cathedral is finished!!



This was a pretty difficult project to complete, so I’m happy I was able to complete the structure (plus an extra house)! As you can see in the last few pictures, I was hit with the “GUI-no-longer-works-right-and-you can-no-longer-save” bug, and I couldn’t get rid of the “harvest resources” message. But overall, the cathedral itself was pretty much finished before this point! I can’t do much else with it, since the lua and pathfinder threw in the towel a while ago. I had to rely on stockpile roads just to see them present–this could be the last time we see this, now with the upcoming release of roads in Alpha 7!

Overall, I would have loved to have mining and the Mason and its recipes for the project, as those braziers and gargoyles would have been perfect. But I went into this project with the challenge to make a stone structure this big without mining.

By the way, I am never doing this again. Where it took me ten game days just to collect the stone for this project, you can probably get the same amount in maybe two with mining.

However, use this to your advantage! If this can be pulled off without mining, just imagine what can be with it. I think it’s about time I move on to Alpha 7 myself–I’ve got a few more casual ideas for projects, so expect something a little simpler but enjoyable in the future!

Thanks for checking out the project, and I’ll see you next time!

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Congrats! It looks marvelous sir. I am truly impressed.

Edit: And yes… playing the music while looking at the pictures is an excellent idea.

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Lias is amazing! well done, and you clearly had some good luck as well.

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I just wonder how messed up this place would look in “show back walls only” mode.

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i am sure you will reveal that to the masses soon… i have faith in our Master Builder… :wink:

well done @Atralane… well done indeed! :smile:

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By the way, I forgot to mention that at the point of those last few pictures, I had actually managed to somehow bug out the music and stop it playing–I don’t think I’ve ever done that before… is that common? Has that happened to anyone else?

Needless to say, the added soundtrack ended up being both inspirational and useful, since things got very quiet (and maybe a little lonely).

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