[New design discussion] Hexes spread horizontally, but what about vertically down.

[Sgtswords]

So picture the scene if you will.

A scout finds a super rare dungeon entrance, this is a legendary(or equivalent) find. He sells this to a guild and the brave adventurers enter the dungeon.

8 levels down of mayhem ensues.

They come to the 9th level and have the ability to create an underground settlement.

This will be a special site that an underground settlement can be formed.

What can this underground settlement give you.

Access to a very high amount of ore (mining).
The ability to be a gateway to deeper dungeons (access to dungeons on a permanent(semi?) basis.
The ability to have the guild hire adventures to keep the upper halls 'safe'.

It will encourage the economy as the holding guild will have to hire people to protect its borders. and also there will be a requirement for an escort back up to the surface.

Im thinking maybe 1 per every 150 hexes?

any how lets start a discussion :)

marko

[Being]

I could get behind the idea, especially for dwarves and gnomes.

[Hark]

I say they should add an Expansion that adds in the Darklands. A whole underground world would be a great excuse for all sorts of new content, especially in terms of races and subterranean settlements.

In terms of NPC propagation I would much rather it be much more strongly weighted so that NPC's spread upward much more quickly than they spread downward.

[Being]

Darklands could be something like a stretch goal set up on GW's new website whenever it debuts.

[Sunwader]

I would imagine there could be a passage through a mountain, maybe a secret/hidden way through a dangerous country. When traveling from A to B you might have to consider a number of possibilities, like traveling by, air, river/water, road or underground.

[George Velez]

I have not seen this subject addressed in any blog or dev posts. I would like to see inside a mountain/hill and underground settlement options for dwarf and gnome charted companies to be available.

[Elorebaen]

I really like the idea of vertical layering of hexes.

[Aeioun Plainsweed]

George Velez wrote:

I have not seen this subject addressed in any blog or dev posts. I would like to see inside a mountain/hill and underground settlement options for dwarf and gnome charted companies to be available.

I second this, but it would be odd if the devs weren't already developing some kind of dwarven style settlement.

[Rafkin]

Very cool. It would be great if Darklands could be populated by players and not be just a themepark element.

[Nonexistent]

The idea of having specialized player settlements, whether they be underground or a village in the trees would be awesome. However in the case of a mountain kingdom you would have to make it possible to destroy the settlement otherwise those who took it would have an unfair advantage. Maybe have the walls of the mountain be destroyable so the defense forces couldn't just hold a couple of small entrances and bottleneck the attackers.

Definitely something that I would support after the game is stable and has most it's features worked out and in game.

[Lord of Elder Days]

As a member of a dwarf guild this idea has my full support.

[Kusuriurite]

So something roughly equivalent to blackreach in skyrim at least in the way of it being connected to several points on the surface?

[Sebastian Hirsch]

This idea has much to recommend it, but might be something to consider once other areas are developed.
It does however raises the interesting idea of resources, lets say guild A is the first to place its starting area on the map – does it know what kind of resources lie in that hex, or is it luck based?

[Blaeringr]

I love the idea of underground realms.

[Wyldethorne]

I like the idea, but how hard would it be resource wise to implement layered hexes? Having a tunnel or wilderness paths that bypasses highly dangerous areas that a guild could control, and offer economic value, by providing guides through the area would be interesting.

[Dakcenturi]

This would be really cool, my only concern is that if you have whole hexes worth of explorable area you might start splitting up the population between above and below grounders.

It might make more sense to simply be able to build underground settlements on certain Hex types. Or maybe limit the amount of underground hexes to a small area rather than all hexes having an undergound component.

[DarkOne the Drow]

I definitely for settlements of the cavern and dungeon type in addition to the normal urban settlements.