Finally, it’s ready! Dropbox - 1480823173946.rar
Many apologies for the delays, I had both IRL interruptions and some technical issues in making the save available. I had to make it a .rar rather than .zip, which shouldn’t cause any other issues but if it does then I can upload the raw file to Dropbox (not ideal, but at least it’ll be guaranteed to work LOL!)
Also, a tip for future players: if your save name changes, e.g. if you make backup saves at each step and you don’t end up uploading the original file, you can easily find the name of the save folder within the metadata.txt file inside of each save.
Oh, and since this is a different file and different process for retrieving it, generic security warning for the benefit of anyone not familiar with this stuff: it’s always a good idea to scan files such as this before doing anything with them, we’re decent folks here so it’s not likely at all for anything dodgy to be included, but it’s a good habit to check anyway.
Anyway, on to the fun stuff!
This is the Iskender trading caravan’s campsite, set up near the oasis. They look like they’re settling in for a while, they normally wouldn’t pitch their larger tents or unload their goods, and they’ve even unhitched the wagons. Normally they’d be pulled by tame Varanus used to the dry desert conditions, but I guess the handlers have let them go play with their aquatic cousins living in the Oasis? Clearly, though, the trading caravan is planning to stop here for a while, what could they be so interested in when the towns are on the other side of the map?
Oh, this might have something to do with it. The lights from the Shrine of Rayya’s Shadow must have called out during the night, letting the elders know that it’s time for a pilgrimage. Atop this rock, at dawn during the mid-year solstice once every thousand years, Monkey’s Shrine appears for a short time; giving brave and cunning adventurers a chance to pit their wits against Monkey in an attempt to earn a portion of Her wisdom… and probably some treasures as well.
At the base of the mountain is a small garden, a perfect place for the adventurers to meditate and find themselves before they enter Monkey’s Maze.
The Ancient Mines. Legend tells that these mines were dug in the earliest days of the world of Hearth, when a group of Hearthlings greedily sought the riches of the world. At first, Monkey tried to reason with these covetous Hearthlings, but they would not listen to Her wisdom. Next, she tried to befuddle them, placing a protective charm around the hearth of the mountain. No matter how hard they dug, the greedy Hearthlings found themselves gaining no ground; until they eventually realised that the charm had caused them to dig around their goal and arrive back at their starting point!
Monkey’s Maze, protecting the secrets and riches hidden in the heart of the mountain. When the greedy Hearthlings found themselves unable to dig through the charm, they hatched a new scheme. They would mine upwards, above the charm’s effects, and then excavate the entire level so there would be no caves or tunnels to confuse them. They reasoned that if they mined out the entire hearth of the mountain, the riches would have nowhere to hide. Monkey did her best to dissuade the greedy Hearthlings with trickery and mischeif, and the confusing maze of tunnels is a testament to her efforts; but they would not give in. With great sadness, Monkey realised that their greed had overcome all reason, and she was forced to intervene to protect the mountain’s heart. She called upon Spider to help her weave a powerful spell, which caused the greedy Hearthlings to slowly change as they spent time within the mountain. They grew shorter, tougher, and began to take on aspects of the stone and earth around them. Those who stayed too long eventually transformed into tiny clay statues, a warning to their fellows.
For the heart of the mountain is where Monkey keeps things no Hearthling should covet. Dread treasures and burning secrets are hidden within the pots and boxes, and the central monument hides the direst of Monkey’s knowledge. It is said that Hearthlings who venture through the maze will gain the chance to speak with Monkey and draw from Her wisdom if they can bring a still-burning ember from the heart of the maze to Her shrine atop the mountain; but should they linger too long in the maze in an attempt to loot its treasures or secrets then the same transforming fate may befall them.
Outside the maze, generations of Hearthlings have built shrines and altars, dedicated to their Ancestors and to Monkey’s teachings.
The Elders travelling with the caravan call their kin to sit around the fire, telling the story of Monkey’s Maze and preparing the bravest, wisest and most curious of their kin for the coming adventure. With all the temple’s lamps lit, and fresh offerings left in the shrines and tombs, the adventurers beseech the many spirits of the place for wisdom, courage and fortitude to enter the maze and leave with only their true selves and the one item they seek.
This is the story of Monkey’s Mountain, its secrets and its importance to the Iskender Clan. They hope that one of their kin can best the maze and speak to Monkey, and so find out the fate of their lost and greedy kin, the Dwar’ven Clan who once sought Monkey’s secrets through brute strength alone.
[OOC]: So this should explain the first 36 hours, lol! The other ~17 hours are due to the difficulties with getting the save uploaded, or really the fact that I tried to do that late at night and had to give up and sleep and then pick it up in the morning. The digging happened pretty quickly, and it took a lot less time than I expected to clean up the ore; but levelling the mason and blacksmith up to build vaults and fire pits took a really long time… especially since they have minds of 6!
At some later turn I’ll go back to the mines and add some chaotic, maze-like digging that gets closer to the heart, and I’ll scatter some garden gnomes through the maze. There’s also the top level of the temple to decorate, I have half a mind to continue the maze up there. That said, there’s plenty of space for a small town up there, so it’s equally tempting to build some kind of ancient gardens which can include farms and a small living space, giving a few hearthlings a place to live while they work on finishing the maze.
I built a small dividing wall to “close off” @BrunoSupremo’s original town to stop the Hearthlings travelling back there, that wall can of course be demolished at any time to let them back in. Likewise, it’s simple to lock the Hearthlings out of the temple area by building a wall across the lowest staircase leading to the gardens. It’s probably worth doing the same thing around the Iskender caravan, otherwise the hearthlings will walk over there to light campfires and possibly to sit on the chairs (depends on whether there’s enough seating near the farms). The maze is caged off and locked with an iron door, which I hoped would remove it from the pathfinding calculations altogher, but it doesn’t seem to have had any impact… perhaps it’s because of the holes in the cage though, so maybe things will improve when the whole temple is sealed off?
As it stands, I’ve kept to 20 Hearthlings and I’m not getting any lag outside of slight pauses while saving. The A* is the main draw on resources (and again, not enough to cause lag for me), but a lot of the time that was while Hearthlings were trying to find a way to get to the clay and stone stored in @BrunoSupremo’s town, so taking that out might well reduce the strain… or it could simply be that building a maze was a silly idea in the first place 
I had hoped to just place the trading monument as a decoration and not upgrade to Tier 2 yet, but alas the game automatically opened the dialogue a couple of days after I put the monument down. At least that means that future builders will have the T2 designs available straight away, but it will probably slow down the rate we acquire new seeds (T2 has more trader events to choose from). Speaking of new seeds, we have Brightbell, Oak Seedlings, Wheat, Turnips and Silkweed.
Advice specifically for @Doc_Brano: I’ve set up the vaults to make it easy to move the entire inventory, simply relocate the full vaults to wherever you want to build. There should be a few days’ food supply in the stone chests, again you can move them to the new location and that should eliminate any back-and-forth travelling to eat. Bear in mind that you’ll want to pack up the beds to move them at the same time, so it’s probably easiest to try to get all of the stuff moved in that morning period between the Hearthlings waking up and stopping for lunch… but if you have other plans they shouldn’t conflict with the way things are stored. Also, there’s a few hundred each of stone and clay stored as piles, so you can deploy them around any construction sites to basically eliminate travel time. Unfortunately there was no equivalent for the copper ore, I couldn’t bring myself to sell it since it’s non-renewable but realistically you can sell most of it and most of the bars if you want to cut down the item count further. Finally, I’ve placed down a rally flag at the caravan for decoration, but you may want to remove it temporarily so that you can use the main town flag as a rally point when moving the Hearthlings around. All of that is simply to help you understand how I’ve set things up, so that you can get into playing ASAP… I’ve wasted enough of your time, I don’t want you to have to spend any more figuring out how and why I’d organized things that way hahah!
Oh, and as a general note for future players: there were a couple of opportunities to trade for iron armour and some un-craft-able weapons, they’re not much use in peaceful mode but I figured someone might want to put them in stockpiles as decoration around, say, a blacksmith shop or barracks. There’s plenty of bronze available to make and sell armour or weapons. I’ve also left a Cleric’s Tome, since I find it useful to have one on hand in case any Hearthlings get stuck somewhere – there is always the teleport command, but where a “legitimate” rescue is preferred (e.g. if it’s just a Hearthling who has mined themselves into a corner and needs a ladder to get them out) a Cleric can prevent the trapped Hearthling from starving while the rescuers work on freeing them.
Ok, phew. Wol Zivadro is ready for its next leader!
I’ll sprinkle in various other pretty flowers and move some silkweeds so that they look like cattails/bullrushes along the water’s edge, which will be a great way to hide the little bit of digging I want to do… there’s a single tree on an almost-disconnected island (the corner of it diagonally touches the bank), and that’s too good of an opportunity to pass up! I’ll set up a small encampment in the clearing between the oasis and the temple so that the hearthlings have somewhere to work while they grow and build everything required.
Just a quick question i thought we could lock doors now, but not sure if thats in a19 stable. Could be a better solution then spending time building a wall to later destroy it.
