The Paint Tool

I decided today to try out the Paint Tool.  I build the castle using dirt to start and now I'm using the paint tool to paint other materials over it which saves on materials since you get a ton of dirt when harvesting.  I've already been through a ton of stacks of dirt.  And I get some of that back when I paint!

Night or day, when the sun hits that copper it really shines and looks really pretty.

I may have gone overboard, but...I actually like it.

The gems, in this case Amethyst and Agate, color a bit differently, cover more voxels than they should.

Draft 1

I had a little building built up the second day of alpha all made out of dirt because I didn't have anything else.  I didn't want to go harvesting.  i really just wanted to build, so I did.  Unfortunately the little hut I built got lost and I had to rebuild.  So I started rebuilding it and kept building until I ended up with this.  I really wanted to do a ruined castle and such and I love the stairs I did for this!

Top down view

The building was 3 stories high with 1 very small room in each level.  I liked the idea of the stairs being on the outside, but I didn't want them to just go straight up, so I wrapped them around the building.

Second floor

Third Floor

The Crumbly Stairs

Draft 2

I've been busy working on my claim.  I got rather tired of harvesting, so I decided to use dirt since I had so much of it and paint over it later since I have my paint tool!  So right now my little slice of the world is just a Castle of Dirt.

I built the castle right into the mountain. I didn't bother to clear a space or level the area. That resulted in a very nice natural-like mesh between the walls of the castle and the mountain.

Fair warning, there's a hole in one of my walls atm.  The only out is with a grappling hook!

I've got a lot of detail work to put in, but so far it's not bad. It's just simple.

For the last week I've been digging and building down to the bottom of my claim. One of the things I wanted to do was test how close to my barriers I could build and to line out my claim.

I've found out that the edges of the claim really don't like you building around them at all, but you can, if you have the patience.

Currently the north wall of my castle has a missing floor to allow access to the secret passageways.

Size of this doorway is 10 voxels high and 8 voxels wide. Probably too small for big races, but as these are secret passageways I felt it was fine.

On your way down you're gonna notice some tabs/voxels by the left of each door. Those are to help guide me/you out. The side of the door they are on goes down. No little tab on the left goes up.

My stairs! This little section in underneath each of the turrets. The floor drops down 5 or 6 voxels at each door way so that the floor spirals around to the very bottom of my claim.

This is one of the long hallways underneath the walls that connect the turrets to one another.

The trunk of a tree that cropped up on my claim a couple of days ago. I've chopped it down but it keeps coming back up. Stupid thing goes all the way up through my turret.

One of the rooms inside the center of the build. I've decided that I made the turrets and such a little big so I'm going to do all the rooms of the castle underground. I'll probably redo it all at some point.

The very bottom floor. There is a floor of 1 voxel high from the bottom of my claim to pad it for when I build more things.

I had difficultly with the making the N on End...

Now I just need to figure out how to make a tower for the center between the four turrets!

Ryder's Mountain

For my non-Alpha friends, claims are like your 'houses' in EQ2, except that it's out in the world.  Anyone can come onto your land, but cannot build/damage unless they have access(disregarding the current state of alpha's access).  There's no zoning.  Whatever was there on the land when you claimed it will still be there when you claim it.

This is the place I choose to claim on the first night of Alpha.  I got lucky and never lost my claim.

Ryder's Mountain

Server: Courage

Zone: Inlet

Location: 156.52, 1311.80, -1906.15

Map:

Introduction

Hi there! My name is Max and I am currently an Alpha tester in EQN Landmark. With the lift of the NDA I’ve decided to start blogging about my alpha experience. I’ll be touching on this and that throughout the game. I may even touch upon some things that have been mentioned in the forums or refer to something that’s being worked on right now. This is just a log of what I’ve encountered in my experience of the Alpha testing.

Before we get started on my current adventures of alpha, let me tell you a little about myself. I promise I’ll keep it short. As you may have guessed I am an avid gamer. I’ve played a number of games from Doom to WoW. My first mmorpg was EQ1 so I have a love for all worlds of EQ. I currently play EQ2 and GW2. On occasion I’ll drop into FFXIV. I have played EQ1, EQ2, WoW, GW2, FFXIV, Warhammer, Rift, City of Heros/Villians, SWTOR, SWG and probably more I can’t remember!

I am also a Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Fiction writer and I will probably post some of my work from my writing blog later. In EQ2 I mainly decorate right now and I love to write stories about what I built or build things from my stories. So you will definitely see some of my work here.

 

I am also a roleplayer in both EQ2 and GW2. I’ve got a lot of friends from both worlds who are interested in seeing what Landmark is all about but don’t have keys, which is a reason why I started this blog. You’ll definitely see some designs that sparked from various roleplay sessions. I’ve also played a few tabletops from time to time.

 

I graduated Oakland University about two years ago with a BA in English. You might see some designs from some classic novels. I love reading and I love seeing those novels come to life. I just finished reading the Game of Thrones novels and am excitedly waiting for the next to emerge. Currently I’, reading Insurgent and can’t put it down.

 

Let’s see what else…I am very happily married for…nine, yes, going on nine years now. We have two adorable cats who just love to lay on the keyboard during gaming time. My spouse and I both play video games. We don’t always play together or play with one another, but we have lots of fun when we do. We even first met in EQ1! But that’s a story for another time.

Well I think that’s about it so let’s talk about Landmark Alpha for a few minutes. So far I have found Landmark to be pretty cool. There’s not much to the game right now since this is Alpha and there are tons and tons of bugs, but as I said…this is Alpha and I don’t expect the game to be perfect because let’s face it, no game is ever perfect.

Right now the game is pretty much just gathering and building on your claim. There’ve been a lot of bugs with claims and people have lost a lot of them. I got my claim not long after the Alpha servers went online. It’s a very nice mountain top view. I had built a cute little stone hut on the top, but then I lost it. Oh well, guess I have to rebuild! I’ve been lucky enough that I have not lost my claim yet. My spouse however lost his and it took him awhile to find another.

 

I haven’t done too much in the game yet. I just made my crafting tables and the Tier 2 pick and the selection tool. I’ve used all the tools except for selection, but the first thing I did after getting my claim…was dig.

 

Digging holes is the most awesome and entertaining part of Alpha right now! The first night someone dug a hole right under the spawn point in a zone. That was both hilarious and annoying. I’m glad they fixed that.

 

You can dig pretty far down. In fact I dug for an hour and there was still more I could dig. For Alpha you don’t have to dig yourself back out. Hit Esc and there’s a Reset to Ground button. Hit that and poof! You’re back on top of the ground and not being buried alive when the land heals. Harvesting trees isn’t as fun. I find it rather boring, but I need the materials to build things!

The worst thing about harvesting right now is having to hold your finger down on the mouse button to keep harvesting/digging or you can click over and over again. There’ve been a lot of complaints about this on the forums and it’s gonna be turned into a toggle option I believe. That’ll make it a lot easier and maybe then harvesting trees won’t be so boring!

I think that’s all I’ve got right now. I’ll post some screenshots and go over the different types of nodes and such later. If you wanna hit me up in game my name is Ryder. My plot is in Inlet on Courage server. Feel free to come by and give me a /wave! I’ll start up a chat channel once I can get in the game if anyone wants to chat. I’m also on facebook(Maximus Ryder) and twitter(MaxGreyflame).

Well, see you next time!