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Towns

Every town has a gate on the road; walk up to the gate and step in, and the view turns top-down. Towns are safe: nothing can hurt you inside. Only Aldhearth is a real city; the rest are small frontier towns.

In a town, lamps glow and breathe with light, flowers drop petals, trees drop leaves, and at night fireflies drift over the grass. In Aldhearth the Flame on the Grand Plaza flickers with sparks and a warm light that breathes (Effects and animation).

Finding your way

• The town map (M). Inside a town the map key opens the map of the town you are in, not the world map. It shows the town's districts by name, an icon for every service and for every person worth finding, and quest-givers ringed in gold. A list beside it says where to find everything. Click a place on the map, or a name in the list, and you walk there. The World map button opens the world map, and outside a town M opens the world map as before.
• The minimap shows the town round you while you are in one, with the same icons. Click it to open the town map.
• Icons carry across the town. Every service and every person worth finding has a small round icon over it, however far away it is, so you can see the forge from the gate. The name shows under the icon when you are near.
• Districts. Walking into one shows its name and what is in it for a moment. Aldhearth has eight: the Keep, the Warden House, the Grand Plaza, Market Street, Crafters' Lane, Gate Street, the Fields and Hearthside. A small town has its Square (or Market Street), and a Harbour, Fields or a Riverside when it has them.

Town projects

Every town has four lots that everyone builds together, tier after tier, with gold and materials:

• Giving. Walk up to a lot's sign and press F (or open Town projects from the town map). The board shows what the next tier needs, with a Give button for each: gold, and materials such as planks, stone, bars, glass and torches. Crystal joins at tier 4, embersteel bars at tier 6 and voidglass shards at tier 9, so what you bring up from the deep helps the town. You only give what the tier still needs, and only while you are in that town. What you give is gone.
• Tiers never end. When everything a tier needs is given, the tier is built at once, the whole world hears it, and the next tier needs 1.3 times the gold and 1.25 times the materials. A town's tier 1 needs 4,000 gold; Aldhearth's needs 10,000 and more materials. After tier 10 the perk stops growing, but every tier still costs more and the race for the plaque goes on.
• It looks grander as it grows. A lot starts as a staked plot. Its foundation stones, then a pile of materials, then scaffolding go up as tier 1 fills. Then it is a timber building (tier 1), stone (3), two floors (5), banners and a flag (8), gilded (12), the patron's statue (16) and a golden roof (20). The fountain grows its basin, a second tier, lamps round it and its statue.
• The patron. Whoever has given the most to a project is its patron: their name is on the board's plaque, over the sign and on the town map, until someone gives more. A tie stays with whoever got there first. Gold counts as itself and a material at its value. The board also lists the top builders of the tier being built and the builders' wall: everyone who has ever given, biggest first.
• Titles. The Builder (Uncommon): give to five tiers of any projects in any towns, each at least a twentieth of that tier's gold. The Patron (Rare): be a project's patron when one of its tiers is built.

The weekly order

Every town with projects (Aldhearth, the towns and the ports) posts an order each week on its town board, at the top above the projects. It is the same for everyone, and new every Monday.

• Five lines, one from each part of the game: something from the farm (wool, feathers, milk, eggs, truffles, honey, glass silk, cheese or woollen cloth), any fish, any dish from the cauldron, something from under the land (copper, iron, mythril or embersteel bars, or crystal) and Jewels of Ascent from the great ones. Aldhearth asks twice as much.
• Give from the board: Give 1, or Give all up to what the line still needs. For any fish or any dish the cheapest you carry go first, never a legend and never what you have locked. Each gift pays its full value in gold at once, twice what the Trade Post pays (a dear fish or dish on an any line pays at most twice what a plain one would).
• Three tiers. At a third, two thirds and all of the order the town's perk for the week grows, and the town hears it. The perk is one of: Grown slain in the town's lands give 10, 20 or 30% more experience; its Trade Post pays 5, 10 or 15% more; repairs at its anvils cost 10, 20 or 30% less. It lasts until the week is out.
• Filled, everyone who gave at least a twentieth of it gets a Jewel of Ascent by letter (one letter an account: your characters count together), and whoever gave the most a Warding stone too.

Work for the town

• The First Stone, a tale from Oswin in Aldhearth (from level 3): walk to the Market Hall's sign, give a first gift to any project, and tell Tobias the crier. See Tales and treasure.
• The town's own work: after you finish an innkeeper's chain, they have one more step: give so much worth to their town's projects. See Quests.
• The builders' week (Aldhearth): each week one of Aldhearth's four projects has a goal for everyone together (a share of what its next tier needs). Tobias the crier tells it (his menu has The builders' week), and so does that project's board. When the goal is met, the whole world hears it, and everyone who gave at least a little to that project that week (a hundredth of the goal, 50 at the least) gets a purse by letter: 250 gold and a tenth of what they gave (up to 650). Anyone who gives after the goal is met gets one too. A new project every Monday, in turn: the Market Hall, the Great Forge, the Lamplighters' Lodge, Founders' Fountain.
• The lamp round (every town): from dusk to dawn (17:00 to 05:00 on Aldhearth's clock), at the Lamplighters' Lodge. Its tab on the town projects' board has Take the lamp round: eight of the town's lamps (all of them, in a town with fewer) go out for you, and only for you. They go dark, with an icon over each that carries across the town, and the town map lists them. Walk up to each and press F to light it. When the last one catches, the Lodge pays: 30 gold and 5 for each of the town's lowest levels, a tenth more for each tier of its Lodge (up to tier 10), and some experience. Once a day in each town.

How towns look

• Lamps along the streets of every town, and banners in Aldhearth's Keep ward.
• Bunting strung between lamps across the streets and squares, smoke from chimneys (Crafters' Lane, the cold towns and many homes), flower boxes under windows (all of Hearthside and many others), and boats at a port's docks.
• The land round the town. Past the wall the ground runs on into the dusk: the road out of the south gate, fields, trees and far farmsteads, fading the further they are.

Aldhearth

The one real city (96 × 76 cells). On its Grand Plaza: Workbench, Furnace, Master Forge, Alchemists’ Cauldron, The Vault, Guild Registry, Notice board, Trade Post, Market Board, Waystone, Wandwright’s bench, The Market Hall, The Great Forge, The Lamplighters’ Lodge, Founders’ Fountain. Also: The Keep, Tower, Tower, Tower, Tower, The Warden House, The Hearthside Inn, Odile’s wandshop, Wick’s workshop, The Market Hall, The Great Forge, The Lamplighters’ Lodge, Founders’ Fountain. More in the guide to Aldhearth, the capital.

The towns and ports

Every other town is a small frontier town behind a palisade: a waystone, a Trade Post, an inn and the basic stations. Ports also have the harbour, where trade packs are paid for. The list goes on forever, east and west; these are the first ones out.