[kingfish]

AFAIK this is actually Lil's claim now, right?

could you give us a progress report, please?

kf

[Nomadic1]

I need a copy of this claim for border matching. (Claim 4-23)

[Liliath]

As I told Kf, this part of the grouped claims 4-17,4-20 has not much done yet, so complete your claim, and I'll match to tour borders ... ( same for the borders you have in common with 4-17 )

[Dexter]

No update for over a year...

[Noirgrim]

Will be back up for claiming when map 2 exteriors are all claimed.

[Haplo]

Unlocking for claiming.

[Zalzidrax]

I think that I'd like to start work on this bit, now that I've 3-38 out of the way. I don't have enough ideas to comnpletely fill the area, but I'm thinking an area this size surely needs a villageand sme plantations along the Southern and Eastern parts. Also I think a Velothi monastary woul be cool. Beyond that maybe a couple ruins, dwarven or elven, or hopefully something more creative if I can think of it. Anything too ostentatious or odd I will of course get input on before putting in.

[Haplo]

Granting... Fire away!

[Zalzidrax]

Okay, so far the land is raised from the sea, I've got land textures in one cell, and am now planning and laying out the points of interest in the region, So far I've got a pretty large plantation in (1,-19), a velothi monastary at (-2,19) and Im probably going to put anotheer slightly smaller plantation in at (-2,-21).

Other ideas for locations wouldbe dwarven ruin or dunmer fort at the end of the valley in the Northwest portion. Anyone know which there is more need for in this region?

Also since the road on this claim leads from Redoran to Hlaalu territory, I was thinking of placing a Redoran checkpoint, just a tower and a couple buildings, similar to the stuff at Ald Velothi. Anyone like or dislike this idea?

[Nomadic1]

IMO don't place any of the Dunmer stronghold architecture. It doesn't really fit outside of Vvardenfell. If you want a ruin, the few Velothi ruin pieces, a Dwemer ruin or a Daedric ruin would be the way to go.

I personally like the idea of a small Redoran checkpoint in the claim.

[Zalzidrax]

I took a picture of the Velothi monastary as it is the most completed part of the claim so far.

I think I'm leaning toward daedric ruin in the northern part, though I think it still probably is going to need another point of interest up in there.

What exactly do you mean about Duner strongholds "not fitting" outside of Vvardenfell? There's no reason I know of they should be confined to the island. Of course they may have a different propylon network, if they even have one, but there's no reason to exclude that type of architecture...

Oooh, maybe I could use some of the Old Mournhold style columns and stuff to create a really old Dunmer ruin at the far end of the valley. Unless there's some pressing lore reason why that wouldn't fit. The period in which Old Mournhold was around was so long ago that it probably doesn't obey the same house borders on architecture, so I don't see any problems straight off.

[Theo]

I would personally also like to see more Chimer strongholds and few nice OM ruins, but I am no lore expert.
Yours monastery looks very nice (better then mine, I will have to invest more efforts . I have already one in 4-17, but it is far away enough from yours.
EDIT: And don't worry about the borders to 4-17, just make them approximately of similar height as are those 4-4 and 4-14 and use GL dirt-dirt/grass textures. If you plan to put some mountains it is no problem as well, just check the picture in 4-17 thread to see what is going on there.

[Nomadic1]

Nice start on the monastery

By the Dunmer strongholds not really fitting outside Vvardenfell is that all the ones known are ancient 6th House strongholds. And also a lore thing about all the super ancient strongholds on the mainland not existant anymore. It isn't to say that there probably aren't any on the mainland, it's just that if they are there they should not be very common.

[Zalzidrax]

Well that doesn't mean that type of structure was unique by any stretch of the imagination. Though I have decided to do a daedric ruin; I'm feeling in a crazy and insane type of mood right now. It's dedicated to the Lord of Forbidden Knowledge, Hermaeus Mora.

[Zalzidrax]

And here's another part, the Old Mournhold style ruin. The only vantage point where you can see it without flying or being in it's little valley is, fittingly, from the statue of Hermaeus Mora. You can just barely see the big statue on a clear day (without a view distance increasing mod).

[Zalzidrax]

And another screenshot of the newest point of interest- a quarry style mine. I'm not sure what exactly it is that is going to beminedhere. Ebony seems a bit on the expensive side, so I'm thinking iron at present. Or maybe, just maybe, gold, but it's probably going to be iron.

[Gnomey]

How about plain stone? I don't think that all the Imperial forts are made of imported stone, it just seems unnecessary. This also gives you some stages of production to work with: Large stones, small boulders, and then Imperial bricks being piled up for moving. I really like what I see, by the way, once map four is out I'll be sure to visit it.

[Zalzidrax]

Not too much to report. Ive just been chugging away filling in the mountains with rocks to make them look more jagged and mountainous, filling in the few areas that remain untextured, and other similar sorts of things. Oh, I did start to add a little hidden mountain garden/shrine affair for the monastary, but no major changes in the pointsof interest so far. I think I need to add a bandit/some other type of person camp to the more open regions, though I'm not sure what. Any ideas of who, besides your everyday bandit, would set up a small camp out off the road aways in plantation country would be most helpful.

If anyone wants to see some more screenshots of the progress, I can probably prettify one of the areas I've been working on a bit more to give a better idea of what it will look like when it's finished. And it might give me some direction in working this rather large tract of countryside that I've got going here.

[Gez]

[Zalzidrax]

[Zalzidrax]

A new in-progress screenshot of one of the plantations that will be dotting the countryside. Othras plantation is the nearest to Stonefalls and the largest.

[Zalzidrax]

My laptop kind of exploded, well not exactly exploded but I think the graphics card is dead and last time I turned it on the monitor went fzzzt and displayed a really cool looking aurora of colors...

Which unfortunatley means that I may not get around to working on this for a while. The harddrive should still be OK I think, so I'm going to get one of my compsci buddies to help me get some of the important files (including the latest version of this claim) off of it, but I'm not exactly sure what I am going to do for a computer.

Maybe I can load the CS onto an iPod or flash drive or something and run it on a school computer...

So at the very least I should get that uploaded later this week. We'll have to wait and see what I can do about continuing work on this though.

[Haplo]

I'll definitely keep my fingers crossed for this claim. Hope you get it fixed soon, mate

[Haplo]

What's the status on this baby, Zalz?

[Zalzidrax]

Well the next couple of weeks I have to finish my senior thesis for Physics, complete my finals, and then, provided I don't fail miserably at either of the previous two, graduate from college.

But I don't really have any sort of a job lined up after that, so unless some one recognizes my *ahem* obvious genius and offers me a job all of a sudden, I'm going to be looking for a while, and thus have a pretty large amount of free time, which I hopefully will manage to make progress on this.\

Oh and I beat Oblivion finally, so that's less of a distraction than it was before.

[Zalzidrax]

Okay, I finally managed to rescue the latest version from my laptop harddrive, and it is once again under construction.

[Zalzidrax]

Here's a screenshot of some of the Hlaalu plantations in the area. The big one I'm thinking is going to be a big mazte/sujamma brewery. Because obviously all the booze has to come from somewhere.

[Zalzidrax]

Finally got the rocky areas in this part how I like 'em. And, if I'm not mistaken, I've managed to nail down all the places in the whole claim that didn't yet have ground textures. Here's the view North from Adathubal Post, a Redoran checkpoint on the border between their territory and that of House Hlaalu.

[Haplo]

It's lookin good mang, keep it up! Can't wait to see the progress after I get back from vacation

[El Scumbago]

One thing I've observed is that we haven't included any stone-extracting sites. Save for Redorans and Telvannis, everyone else uses stone, which is supposed to come from somewhere.

[CleverClothe]

We could add those in during the detailing phase, allowing us to pick good spots.

A good place to start would be Map 3. The first very populated map. Has large mountainous areas, and a large need for stone.

[Zalzidrax]

I'd considered a stone quarry as a possibility for the mine I made here, however it was in Redoran territory and the only major Redoran settlement in the area is Ouada-Gahridur which is quite ancient, and probably hasn't needed much stone in a long time. So I decided to make it a relatively rare iron mine, since House Redoran does need weapons to equip their troops with.

[Haplo]

Theo did a very nice quarry in Map 3, southeast of Almalexia. I want to say it's 3-3-Ind, but I don't think that's right for some reason.

[Theo]

Yes it is now called Taythionis Quarry and is located in 3-3 in neighborhood of Almalexia. It was originally designed as an Ebony Quarry, but it does not make sense that such a rare mineral was being mined at surface anyway. You can just replace the ebony containers with some adequate rocks and you have a stone quarry in a minute.

[Thrignar Fraxix]

any updates?

[Zalzidrax]

I've not been too inspired to work on it much as of late. I'm trying to change that - it's now to the point where all I have to do is place small details, plant life, etc. and then do the vertex coloring. However, that does happen to be the most arduous part in my opinion, sso it's harder to get inspired about it. I'm currently helping my dad reroof the house, so maybe once I'm done with that, this will seem a whole lot less like work andI'll find the time to finishj things up.

[Haplo]

How's this coming Zalzidrax?

[Tyrion]

I hople Zalz hasn't left. Did he say he was leaving for something?

[Zalzidrax]

I've actually done some work on this, adding in small rocks and shrubs, making the wine cellar cave entrance look more interesting, that sort of thing. It's had to tell how much I have to go though, seeing as it's mostly smaller stuff that's harder to notice when zoomed out.

Also, here's an in game screen of the monastery in a much more finished state.