August 25

Started the day by placing the tiles that create shadows. All buildings in the town now properly drop shadows. Also fixed several problems with the tiles and made new shadow tile for giant diagonal walls. After that, I made the steppe biome rocks.
They are recolored desert rocks, nothing fancy. Since I was making rocks anyway, I have implemented silver ore rocks and a system that prevents characters from mining rocks if their Gatherer level is lower than the resource level. Now there's a good reason to gain XP in Gatherer class: Level 11 of it is required to gain ore from silver rocks. After I was done with rocks, I have started decorating the town with the new steppe grass assets. Some parts of the town are now 100% finished!
Very happy with how that looks =] After running out of places where I could put grasses, I started making ruined clay brick wall pieces.
Still want to make a few more because the battlefield zone will have lots of them. But that's for the other day.

August 26

Started the day by making three more clay brick ruin pieces. After that, I made a memorial statue:
"Sorrow" The plaque says: The War 279-286 I want to add statues and monuments in every larger town and city - something about that is very cool, plus it has to be a very powerful worldbuilding tool alongside making locations at least a little more unique. The statue square required vertical benches, so I also made a few of those. Was at home only for a couple of hours, so that's all of the progress today.

August 27

Today I was polishing the town. I started by adding minor details like protrusions to houses and placing more assets to the town. Then I fixed a minor color issue with the new rock assets and made new giant walls for the town entrance.
After that, I made more assets for the town - flags, signs, decorations, and iron doors.
Spent an hour of so adding them to the town - now it only needs NPCs and some extra content to be finished! But NPCs will come last - tomorrow I'm hoping to start working on the battlefield zone! Today's screenshots:
The owner of that white house seems to be trying to make a garden. But - kings and queens! - that's a lot of rocks!
Center of the town and a trilith.

August 28

Today I started working on steppe biome pits. I need them for mines and battlefield trenches. The pit tiles themselves are almost done, all I need to do is make shadows for them.
Yep, that's alpha! Unfortunately, that's all progress today - lost several hours of work again. I hope I'll get a full workday before the end of this entry, which I guess is just tomorrow.

August 29

Pits and pit shadows are done! Time for...
No man's land! This part of the area will have: - Trenches and magical explosion craters. - War chests, loot containers that may contain silver equipment. - Traps: Arrow launchers and iron spikes. - Strong and weak enemies. - Various battlefield assets: Broken military equipment, barbed wire fences, etc. To make things interesting, there will be three ways to cross the no man's land: Long way: It will take a while to reach Eastern Trilith going this way, but it's a safe way - players will only encounter low-level enemies here. Short way A: Going this way will get you to Eastern Trilith very quickly - but this way is full traps. It will be challenging to use this way without getting hit by arrows from launchers or iron spikes. Short way B: This short way will have multiple high-level enemies in a narrow passage between trenches. Having different ways to get to the same place lets players make meaningful decisions during an otherwise boring task of moving between locations. Plus, it's always fun to return to the area after a while and see that a section that used to give you trouble - E.g.: Short way B - is no longer a problem thanks to your new skills and items. Rewarding! Anyway, I have started making the zone by marking where the ways would be:
Then I have placed trenches:
I have ended the workday after adding iron spike traps and automatic arrow launchers for the short path A:
Don't like how these spikes look, so I'll have to improve them in some way.

August 31

Today I continued making no man's land. Short way A is now finished gameplay-wise:
This is not easy to do consistently and I hope it will be fun for the players to challenge themselves with this small puzzle. After figuring out short way A, I have started working on battlefield assets:
Tomorrow I'm planning to make the rest of the needed assets and begin polishing the zone - but that will go into the next entry. That's is all for now, thanks for reading =]