Cellar, and everything which belongs there

Forum for suggesting changes to Salem.

Cellar, and everything which belongs there

Postby pberci » Mon Jul 17, 2017 4:54 pm

I have a wide collection of ideas, how cellars could work and what type of opportunities they could offer:

1. About the structure itself:

About the cellar entrance:
It would be good to have and independent cellar entrance building, like mine entrances, but also attach cellars to the various houses already existing in the game:
Pilgrim's Hovel - none
Farmer's House - optional external cellar door constructable (similarly to fireplaces)
Townhouse - optional internal cellar door constructable
Brick Townhouse - prebuilt internal cellar access and starting area and optional external cellar door constructable (both leading to the same cellar)

Building and expansion of cellars:
Somewhat similarly to mines, but instead of various rock tiles, there could be dirt tiles, rocky tiles, and rooty tiles, which means, that the main tool for their creation should be the shovel, with a fair use of the axe and the pickaxe.
Their size has to be limitted, unlike the infinitely wide-spreading mine networks one can build. The limitation could be made for example with limitting the map size to a fixed square, limitting the maximum dug tiles by a 100% collapse chance for over the limit tiles, or with both. Or in a total different approach, using a fixed ammount of small rooms.

Support and collapse: collapses should not happen in 1 and 2 tile wide areas, but should be very likely above that. Multiple supports could be used to prevent that: stone supports (cheapes, weakest), wooden supports (planed board) and brick supports (with mortar) as best. Each granting wider support area.
Also, it's important, what the walls are: either left as dirt, which provides very few support, but dries over time, slowly increasing its capabilities, or can be reinforced by the above 3 methods, but about half the price than above mentioned methods. If the reinforced tile has more than one adjacent tile cleared, it should lose its supporting effect, possibly triggering a collapse.

There should be a function to fill back tiles by building a stone and wood structure, and right clicking it with dirt.

Pavement: cellars should have dirt floor, like the dug areas overground with paving allowed.

2. About the possible mechanics:

Thermal: Cellars should offer a mildly cold climate, unchanged by season, resistable with light clothing, but inducing hypothermia if fully naked.

Water incursion: cellar entrances built close to water or well spots should have leaks, which lowers their temperature, prevents the drying of wall tiles and significantly increases the spread of harmful blight (discussed later). Paving and wall reinforcement should reduce the effect of the leaks, but not prevent it. A wet cellar is a bad cellar, this should be a function for players to be careful about.

Blight and fungi: Different fungi could be necessary for different fermentations carried out in the cellar, for example cheese, wine, beer, spirits, etc... For these to happen, various fungi should grow on the walls around the fermenting device, while avoiding others (similarly to the timber pile mechanics).
There should be a very small chance for any fungi to appear on non-treated tiles not already covered by fungi, increased, if it is a soft earth tile. These walls then could be scratched for fungi samples, which then be sold in Providence for other players, or be used to spread it to other tiles.
A tile could be washed by water clean of fungi (making dry earth tiles soft again), or covered by limed water to create fungi resistant tiles, however, water leaks should damage and wash down the lime covering.
Furtherly, there should be purely harmful fungi type(s), maybe also used as poison item or witchcraft material. These could be induced by water leaks and should also be able to overtake fungi covered tiles. Staying long in a blight covered cellar should increase madness and possibly infect the player with disease (lowered possibility with plague masks, but even the premium one shouldn't give 100% resistance here).
There also should be a mechanic to infect some items players can carry into their cellars to store, just to mess with them, even dry cellars should not be safe completely.

Smoke out: special wood pile built of stone and coal, which fills the cellar with smoke, killing any type of fungi, and preventing their chance of reappearance for a few days, for hopelessly infected cellars. Burns for 12 hours, disappears after the process is finished. The cellar slowly fills up with smoke after ignition, blocking vision and dealing damage to Phlegm forst, then Blood and Black Bile too. The player is heavily advised to leave immediately, after the fire is started.

3. Structures within the cellar:

Stock pit: a 2x2 or 3x3 tile sized structure, works similarly to stockbins, but stores vegetables and pumpkin only, maybe corn and grain too. Crafted with clay, stones and planed boards. Has two state: covered and uncovered, which can changed by right clicking them and selecting the appropriate action. A covered stock pit could be walked over (no item placement on it though), while its inventory is inaccessible, while and uncovered one can not be stepped on, but its content is accessible.

Ice pit: a small cellar within a cellar, which has a fixed, unchangable size. It can take in shelves or containers. It should have a hole in the center, where the players can pack ice/snow. The melting of ice/snow is decreased according to the ammount of ice/snow present, the more you have, the slower the melting, has a cap though.
The more ice is there, the colder the pit should become (should have a cap though) over time, possibly causing heavy hypothermia effect for the unprepared. Spoiling food items should have their rate of spoiling lowered, while they are stored in the ice pit. There could be possible punishing mechanics though, like increased spoiling speed after removing the item from the ice pit, or slow decline of purity, while being on ice.
The temperature of ice pits could also effect the temperature of the cellar itself a bit.

Meat hooks: to store full animal carcasses, giving further bonus for butchering and the ability to drain blood without the necessity to find the heart. They could also be put into the ice pit for preservation, if meat will spoil too.

Wine/beer barrels/bottles, brewing equipment, bottle shelves, cheese racks, etc... most of these have already been discussed, I don't want to go into detail with them.

The nasty stuff: The cellar is also an ideal place for pesky intruders on one's claim. There could be a possibility for one to lock anyone passed out on the claim with the Crime! debuff into certain medieval devices constructed underground. This could also be a crime itself, of course if one can get the necessary evidence. Punishing the player this way could replace the time spent in the stocks, and allow the owner, and possible friends to punish the perpentrator stronger, than they would do in the stocks. Of course this way random passersby could not be able to whip them though.
After a certain time, modified by various factors, the prisoner should be teleported home, if still alive. Smoking out a cellar containing prisoners should act as a mine KO, teleporting home them without inspiration and proficiency loss.

I'm not a witch, though I'm sure witches could also have special devices in their cellars.
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