While the object development of the settlement part is estopped (no offense meant!) by the redesign, I focused my thoughts on scenario ideas. I had this one in mind for a very long time.

I want to start with some general thoughts. I think after all it would be nice to put some more thinking into our settlement scenarios. The first two attempts are the obvious "mine ALL the stuff" approaches, one with gold and one with ore. I don't generally dislike these kind of scenarios as long as we spare the player the same old stuff in new cloaks with the following maps.

Sunshine and Seven Keys are good examples of scenarios that use custom scripted goals to set the player against non-standard obstacles which actually helps keeping the fun. The usual "what makes Clonk great is the landscape" factor doesn't disappear in these circumstances but is omnipresent. The goal doesn't arbitrarily makes you mine for its own sake but sets one in the need to do this in order to achieve everything else. It's like your own fault if you do need material and therefore you can't blame the game for it!

I tried to pick this concept up in my scenario but with less complexity and difficulty. After all, this should be a casual scenario and no "you will beat this once in your lifetime"-stuff. ;)

The story

Of course, the most important aspect of the scenario, a few lines of text, forgotten after the first 15 minutes of play. Okay, here we go:

You are an archaeologist / a group of archaeologists (depending on how many clonks we grant the player) who is on a mission to retrieve a famous artefact named the 'Blood Crystal' that - which goes without saying - afterwards you will deliver to a museum for the public to enjoy without any reward.
The scenario can also be named after the artefact (Blood Crystal, you remember) but that will cost us the obvious allusion.

The Blood Crystal is said to be hidden beneath the lost Castle of Bloody Hell (working title) which location you discovered in a more than ancient tome that was certainly very dusty. Because finding the castle is as likely as spotting the Yeti at a dinnerparty with Nessie, no one actually believes you let alone sponsoring your costly expedition, leaving you more or less impecunious when you arrive. But nonetheless you are confident that your adventure will be most wondrous...

The story will be carried on by floating text messages appearing at certain steps in your overall progess.

The landscape

Behold the very tiny preview that Mape offerred me for dynamic landscapes (I enlarged it!):



As you can see I wanted to create layers that hold different materials. The first digging steps will lead you into rock and coal and you have to get through this to acquire more valuable goods. The bottom has some thin spots of gold in it, on the right side above the gold layer is ore. On the left side I planned an underground lake. 2 caves are present but more on that later. Missing material is sulphur and here starts your trouble. Getting explosives won't be easy. As some people know I wanted to have a method of producing sulphur by burning 2 pieces of coal in the foundry (have a look here). Whenever we finish buying goods in producers instead of producing them with raw material, you will have the alternative to pay with hard coin (assuming you mined the gold).

I may reduce the amount of ore and gold because I have planned different ways of acquiring these. The castle waits on top of a (theoretical) hill and is filled with cool medieval stuffs:



One will discover old armor, swords, lances and other knightly things between the crackling walls and also that the wooden stories outlived their days of stability (meaning things will come down if you run over them). Maybe one or two goods made of gold are also in there. I am confident that everyone recalls my plans on having the foundry burning all stuff made purely from metal into metal (see here). It's easy to guess that a most reckless raider as you are will not hesitate to put these dust traps of lesser historical value to the flames in order to achieve the final goal of getting the crystal.
What you see in the left part is also an old elevator shaft beneath the castle. This will give you the notion that the knights have themselves dug into the earth!

In the two caves you will find what remained of the crusades into the darkness: Very old mining gear scattered around and - most comforting to your purpose - chests filled with ancient explosives!



Below the castle awaits a bricked room that's walls are of astonishing durability. Only one door grants access to the chamber but it's jammed. The ancient mechanism will need careful repairs to work again. You will need a fair amount of metal and wood to open the door. (I know that I'm more or less in breach of my own rules now but I guess it's tolerable this way)


I had a cooler sketch but Photoshop crashed on saving! My apologies...

The enemy

I wanted to spice things up a little bit. Your obstacle is not only the landscape but there is an actual threat: The haunting Ghosts of Bloody Hell!
This is a somehow grave decision because we are introducing supernatural beings in the game. To be fair, older clonk titles had the soul of the old man in Three Brothers but nothing more ghastly than this.

As soon as you enter the right side of the map (remember: where all the ore is stored!) you will get the first floating text:
A cold shiver runs down your spine...

Hopefully you will get this by just wandering off to the castle and not digging through the ground, so the ruin is in your view.
As soon as it turns night (or soon after the message if it is night), the ghosts appear. These are half transparent clonks showing up near you, slashing with a sword. A single blow doesn't do much harm but they will reappear over and over again. To prevent the ghosts from coming you will have to set up torches which keep the ghosts at distance. Might be that in the castle a single torch glimmers in the dark and your fearless raider mentions that the ghosts are avoiding this spot.
So either put up torches or restrain your raids to the day. Some time in the past Ringwaul made a cool pocket watch that will come in handy here to keep track of the time.



Your clonk will eventually remember an old tale about the Blood Crystal: It harvests souls of any sorry being that had the bad luck of dieing near to it, enshrining them inside it so they will never find peace. These souls are trying to prevent the living from getting near the crystal to spare them the same fate but they are quite overzealous at this task because sometimes they kill the ones they mean to protect. ('sometimes' meaning when you have too little health left!)

The Blood Crystal

Behold! The Crystal in all its beautiful horror! Deep inside you see the poor, damned souls flickering.



Once you got all the material to fix the mechanism and opened the door, the game will get to its final stage. You will need a slashing item (axe, sword) to cut off the crystal from its socket (the socket is far too heavy to lift and it's better to get like ~80% of the crystal than nothing!). When this is done the ghosts are fully alarmed and will start attacking you no matter what time of the day it is or how many torches you've set up. Only daylight will stop them. The last task of the game is to deliver the crystal to the upper left corner, ready for carry-off.

Final thoughts

- Healing is achieved through either moss from the underwater lake or wheat grown from seeds found in the caves. Before that only mushrooms are available
- Maybe a shield will prove effective against the ghosts' attacks

A landscape proposal I'm more or less content with, using the dynamic generator: