The Biweekly livestreams have offically kicked off and shall be continuing this Thursday. The topic for this live-stream will be the mason. Post your mason related questions here for @Tom to answer on the livestream!
Time&Date Conversion
Channel Link: Twitch
What limitations, if any, will the Mason have?
Any hope of cobbled roads?
Which classes will the mason be upgraded to?
Will the mason eventually be able to build special construction?
if I understand correctly, this particular tree progression, as @Tom was describing last night, is:
wood (carpenter) > stone (mason) > metal (blacksmith)
unless you were referring to the skills the mason can ālevel upā to?
I think there were also workshop-specific upgrades as well, like the spinning wheel for the weaverāthe way that it sounded initially suggested that it might have been a separate class. So, I guess that brings my question up:
What workshop upgrades are you considering for the Mason, and what might they do?
Also, the Mason is technically a āTier 2ā worker, somewhat similar to the Weaver and Farmer. From my experience, I usually donāt get these classes in a migrantāI mostly see Carpenters, Footmen, and Settlers. Will the Mason be possible to acquire as a migrant, and if so, will there be different requirements to unlock their occurrence? The simplest way I can think of right now is to have a higher total net value, allowing a chance for these second-tier workers.
And my final question, just a point of curiosity: Are there any planned recipes or craftables that involve a Weaver-Mason crossover? Most of the items weāve seen only involve the Carpenter and Mason. Maybe there could be a stone marker with a flag as an early, basic recipe? Maybe it could eventually be used as a ābookmarkā in the world to jump between places being explored and the city proper.
EDIT: Hereās one other question I came up with later.
We saw bricks as a craftable item by the Mason previouslyāwhile we havenāt seen them in use too much, I assume they will be used for construction. However, I am curious about eventual ābiggerā construction projects. Will there eventually be ālarge-scaleā crafting projects/recipes, and how will they be handled?
Specifically considering the giant stone statues seen in the cityscape image, they seem more artistic than a normal settler might be capable of, and way too big to simply craft and throw in a stockpile. Would this mean the project would have to be built in place (canāt be deployed/undeployedāmore like a structure), and that these projects only allow the correlating profession to work on it?
It might give a reason to have a greater number of Carpenters and Masons beyond having more workstations to queue craftables, plus offer some āepicā projects to aim for in your settlement.
One serious and one not so serious question:
Will there be cooperative crafting?
i.e. will there be items made of wood and stone that are jointly
constructed by the mason and the carpenter?
Edit: To clarify, I mean both of them crafting something simultaneously, not āMason makes stack of bricks, carpenter uses bricks to build [ā¦]ā
Is the mason a former Whiterun guard?
āI used to be a soldierā¦ā
No i mean that some of the classes branch into more (Like the trapper will later be upgraded to the Big game hunter and so on)
Whats is the end goal for the mason? Like where do you see him down the road at the end of the finished product. How will he evolve and become a bigger part of a village?
Thank you for your time 
Is there a possibility that tthe mason perhaps, might be able to build generalized āstatuesā and then you could randomize the type of statue that comes out?
(I t would add to the storytelling potential imo,)
Will the Mason be able to build stone weapon upgrades for footmen and other classes?
Another pathfinding optimization that seemed wasnāt mentioned was following. If you have three goblins they could just share the same path, even with an offset that would help a lot.
What if they somehow got put into a āsquadā which operates off of one pathfinder? (The concept of squads for combat has been thrown around to avoid micro-managing on the Discourse) Would a group organization somehow be able to organize numerous units for long distances, then become more specific as terrain/obstacles come into play? Iām not too familiar with the ways pathfinders can be streamlined, especially for Stonehearthās case currently.
Although, I guess this wasnāt necessarily a Mason question per seā¦
If squads have leaders, and a size slightly bigger than the sum of their units then it would make pathfinding easier.
It also doesnāt seem like they are doing Line of Sight, which I am intuitively guessing would aid in pathfinding*
I put this here because it was mentioned during the same screen castā¦
*(A quick googling supports my intuition: Lazy Theta*: Faster Any-Angle Path Planning | AiGameDev.com)
Could we possibly see something like World of Warcrafts Follower system in Stonehearth?
Iām referring to the side of it where you can basically select a quest and assign a follower, some require more than one follower but offer better rewards. Each follower has itās own weakness and gain, plus a level. This puts out a percentage of if it can be completed. Like you can have an 67% chance based on level, gain, and weakness.
http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/resized/421975.jpg
If I understand what you are saying correctly (please correct if Iām wrong), the gameplay could pan out like:
That could be interesting as a new scenario.
Exactly what I was thinking!