Arcadia Areas

The very first area outside Arcadia that you travel to, the Grania Plains is meant to invoke the wide open grasslands and hills that a lot of starting areas like to use. There’s wide open spaces, scattered trees, rivers, ponds and hills. And of course, the traditional high-level enemy in the middle of the starting area guarding a cool treasure.

A counterpart to the Grania Plains, the Silent Fens start off with similar grasslands and woods, alongside a farm and camp of adventurers, but quickly changes into an expansive swamp traversable only on the small patches of dry land and various bridges. This is also where the enemies start to get stronger, showing that you are no longer in the tutorial areas.

A nice open woodland complete with babbling brooks and a small pond. More of a transitionary area between the Grania Plains, the Silent Fens, and the Deep Woodland.

For this area, I wanted to go for a grassy canyons style area, with plenty of valleys and nooks and crannies to hide things in. Not a full on maze (that is saved for dungeons), but a nice little area to poke around and find cool things in.

The first main dungeon the player enters, the Deep Woodlands has many winding paths but very few dead ends, allowing me to simulate the feeling of being lost in the woods while limiting backtracking and allowing almost every path to at least lead to something.

While the Deep Woodlands is the first required dungeon, the Waterfall Cave is more likely to be the earliest dungeon a player visits. It is located in the very first area and has minimally powerful enemies. Being one of the first dungeons, the path through it is mostly linear, with a few offshoots for treasure or a look at what’s coming up.

While it’s certainly possible that players will stumble across the Deep Swamp before any of the other dungeons, the higher level enemies both right before it and inside it should show that this is a slightly later area. That being said, it’s still fairly early, limiting its size and complexity.