Trader Ruins

[ifoz]

There's a reason people live holed up in the villages!
Just wanted to show off these three trader ruins I did recently for Better Ruins, really happy with how they turned out. 
They're very much based on the upcoming 1.22 trader rework, so once that happens they'll fit in with the normal trader structures.

My aim is to lull the player into a false sense of security ("Oh hey, a trader!") before they get in closer and see the holes in the roofing, and then the skeletons. x)
Also to show how dangerous the world is to human settlers, that too.











 

Edited November 13, 2025 by ifoz

[Maelstrom]

10 hours ago, ifoz said:

to show how dangerous the world is to human settlers, that too.

A critique intended to help with an idea to consider.   The village looks like it is suffering from early ravages of time more than fell prey to something dangerous (which I interpret as violent).  Perhaps throw in a breach of the palisade and wall.  Not many, mind you, so that there is an implication that there was a fight to the bitter but inevitable and unfortunate end.  Maybe place skeletons in only buildings with breached walls/doors.  It implies a last desparate stand.

My imagined experience coming upon such a trader location:

Cool!  Traders...  wander into the town...  Bummer, empty...   Wander through a building or two...   Huh.  Must of abandoned the place...    Find a breach in a palisade...  Ohhhh....  Find a breach in a building's wall and multiple skeletons inside...   Ooohh  nooooo....  These poor people.   peronsal log: Jonas, you bastard!

To elevate the horror even more limit the breached settlements to one out of three or four such settlements.   The others, just abaonded or "died" peacefully and succumbing to the ravages of time (variable as those may be).

Take or leave as you see fit.   

Edited November 13, 2025 by Maelstrom

[ifoz]

7 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

A critique intended to help with an idea to consider.   The village looks like it is suffering from early ravages of time more than fell prey to something dangerous (which I interpret as violent).  Perhaps throw in a breach of the palisade and wall.  Not many, mind you, so that there is an implication that there was a fight to the bitter but inevitable and unfortunate end.  Maybe place skeletons in only buildings with breached walls/doors.  It implies a last desparate stand.

All three of them have different little stories - the small standalone rammed earth hut has a breached palisade and a skeleton nearby, indicating they died trying to defend their perimeter. The standalone cob hut has a skeleton in the bed, likely victim to sickness or age. (Also features some weapons and a cellar with food, I kind of wanted the vibe of "no matter how much they prepared, it was inevitable). The third one, the larger outpost has three beds. There's two skeletons buried behind the house and marked with gravestones, while the third bed is in the abandoned wooden shack behind the stone hut. That one I wanted to leave a little ambiguous, as to what happened to the third inhabitant.

Edited November 13, 2025 by ifoz

[Maelstrom]

I've always imagined that the ruins we find "escaped" the ravages of time because temporal storms time skipped them into the future, so that time had *ahem* less time to break them down.

[ifoz]

2 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I've always imagined that the ruins we find "escaped" the ravages of time because temporal storms time skipped them into the future, so that time had *ahem* less time to break them down.

I like to think that for some of the underground ones and the ones around the perimeter of a certain story chapter 2 location that may or may not involve parkour, but for the normal surface ruins I think they've probably aged normally.
In vanilla, none have exposed wood, they're all just stone foundations.
 

Spoiler

Considering it's only been around 500 years since the Grand Machine's activation, I think that reasonably they could be in this state.

 

[Maelstrom]

Agreed.   Prior to introduction of RA it was left to our imagination about these things.  Why are some ruins underground while others are on the surface?  I assumed there was some kind of Lovecraftian shenanigans (duh) that warped space along with time to relocate surface dwellings to underground.   Then found some lore indicating otherwise, primarily a certain person's journal about escaping some underground confines.  But we're wandering into topics that should probably be relocated to the Vintarian Discussions forum

[LadyWYT]

Love it! I think a lot of players don't fully realize just how dangerous the VS world really is. Aside from the monsters wreaking havoc, there's still the standard threats to survival, such as injuries, disease, and age, even though a lot of that is handwaved due to it being a videogame. Additionally, even if we assume that medical science had some massive improvements over what it was for the Middle Ages, it's not like it's really feasible to go running to the nearest medical clinic for treatment of injury or illness, since...well, there really are no clinics outside of the rare settlement. The doctors that do exist realistically wouldn't be leaving their settlements, given they offer a valuable service and are almost unreplaceable should something happen to them.

2 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

I've always imagined that the ruins we find "escaped" the ravages of time because temporal storms time skipped them into the future, so that time had *ahem* less time to break them down.

I've generally chalked it up to them not escaping the ravages of time, and that's why we find nothing left but stone for surface ruins. Underground conditions tend to be more stable and protected from the elements, hence why a lot of artifacts and creature mummies tend to be found hidden in caves. Thus underground ruins tend to be more intact.

I do think though, that in the event of procedural dungeons, it would be interesting to have the rare ruined outpost on the surface, as it's not out of the question that some survivors tried to start new settlements and succeeded for a time, only to be later overrun. Perhaps it was monsters, but perhaps it was bandits, or potentially even some tyrannical faction trying to re-establish Old World nobility(depending on which way the devs want to take the story).

[Maelstrom]

Aged wood appearing in some ruins but not other caused me to think of the whole temporal shifting of ruins but not others.  Ruins with aged wood are "younger" than ruins of only stone.