Hey everyone!
Carlos and Alex here, we are the developers of Ars Notoria and we wanted to share more details about the game with you guys. We will be posting bi-weekly overviews of the game features and development progress until the game’s release. Let us know what you’d like to hear about in future articles.
In the first article, we are going to talk about the building mode in Ars Notoria. We always enjoyed having a customizable base or a player’s home in various RPGs and wanted to add a similar feature to our game. So, we decided to implement a building mode where you can freely construct your own buildings from simple parts anywhere in the playable region and also customize them to your liking. The building and crafting are also totally optional and you can complete the game without using them if you’d prefer to focus on other activities like combat or completing quests.
You can access the building mode through a simple menu that consists of six categories, each one with multiple building elements that you can use.
The six main building categories available in the game are the following:
- Encampment This category contains everything needed for building camps in the wilderness and creating fortified outposts. You can start building your camp by placing a campfire, various tents, and sleeping bags that can be used to rest and recover health. Later you can improve them by adding different crafting tools and storage containers that will help you to replenish missing supplies or create new items. Since building in the wild and far from your base is dangerous and various enemies can attack your camp, it’s always a good idea to construct defenses such as barricades, wooden walls, gates, and watchtowers.
- Construction This is the main category for constructing all types of buildings: from small wooden cabins to large stone houses with multiple floors. It contains many building parts such as foundations, walls, windows, doors, floors, roofs, and others. Each part comes in different sizes, materials, and styles, and can be placed either by using a grid or in the free placement mode. If at any point during the game you want to cancel the placement of a building part, you can easily demolish it while receiving back the full amount of spent resources. This is great for experimenting and also prevents unnecessary resource grind if you change plans in the middle of construction.
- Furniture Here you can find different types of furniture that can be placed inside houses that you built: tables, chairs, beds, fireplaces, chests, crates, shelves, and more. Furniture can be placed both inside houses and outdoors, and moved/rotated freely anytime. Almost all of the furniture pieces (except decorations) can be used in some way: you can cook food on the stove, rest on the bed, or store items and resources in containers.
- Harvesting There are various tools and equipment that can be used for harvesting and processing resources. Some items like axes, shovels, sickles, or pickaxes can be used manually, while others will process the resources on their own (for example, smelting ore in the furnace). Players can build whole harvesting stations with many tools and upgrades near resource deposits and recruit NPCs to collect resources automatically.
- Production The production category is closely related to the harvesting one and contains tools and equipment needed for item crafting. It contains various instruments, workbenches, kilns, and machines that can be used to create new equipment like weapons, armor, accessories, explosives, potions, etc. Just like with the harvesting equipment, players will be able to assign workers to the crafting stations and give them tasks to craft specific items.
- Farming The last category is focused on farming and gardening. You will be able to plant multiple types of crops, bushes, and trees in your yard. It also includes different wooden fences, gates, barns, awnings, and other items that you can use for decoration.
The building mode can be accessed right from the game start but not all elements are unlocked right away. You will need to find the necessary resources for building elements to unlock their recipes.
That’s all for today, thank you so much for taking the time and checking this article! We will continue to share more information about the game in the coming weeks.