Architecture

Racial architecture of the same Village (stage 3) node on different server realms. Dünir Dwarven influence (top). Kaelar Human influence (bottom). Alpha-1 Non-NDA screenshot.

The layout and architecture within a Node’s development area are determined by influential race. For example, a stage 3 Node with the majority of player contribution being Py'rai would have a Py'rai village with Py'rai architecture. Most NPCs would be Py'rai elves, and offer questlines within the Py'rai narrative.^[1] – Margaret Krohn

Each player’s contributed experience is flagged with their character race and other identifiers. When a Node advances, the race with the highest experience contribution determines the Node’s style and culture. This style and culture change can happen at every Node Stage. For example, if a Node advances to Level 2 - Encampment Stage and 51% of all experience was earned by Ren’Kai players, the Node will be a Level 2 Ren’Kai Node. If that same Node advances to a Level 3 - Village Stage Node, but the Py'Rai contributed 62% of all the experience earned, then the Node will be a Level 3 Py'Rai Node.^[2] – Margaret Krohn

Node layout and style is determined by several factors:^[3]^[4]

The way that the node system is built is that they can exist across a spread of 18 biomes, but at the same time have to represent the cultural influence of these cultures that are intrinsically a part of a specific biome.^[5] – Steven Sharif

Environment (biome) and location of the node.^[5]^[3]^[4]
- A node's footprint is a 1 km² development area where a node's buildings are located.^[6] Nodes can adjust the local topography of their footprint to fit the aesthetic and mechanical requirements of the node.^[7]^[8]^[9]^[6]^[10]

Node type.^[4]

Some parts are determined by the area it's in. Some parts are determined by the type it is. Some parts are determined by the race it is; and then the rest of it is determined by the mayor.^[4] – Jeffrey Bard

Race that contributed the highest percentage to the node's advancement will alter the racial appearance of its buildings, NPCs, props, and narrative systems.^[7]^[11]^[12]^[13]^[3]^[2]^[4]^[14]^[15]
- Parent races do not combine their cultural influences. For example, Py'Rai and Empyrean count as different cultures. Their parent race, the Pyrian, no longer exists.^[16]
- This style and culture change happens at every stage.^[2]
- This applies to all nodes, including castle nodes.^[17]

All nodes, whether they're associated with a castle or associated with normal node structure, has cultural influences that replicate over to the buildings that are produced and the NPCs that are present.^[17] – Steven Sharif

The rest is determined by the node's mayor.^[4]
- It should be possible for a node to complete several building projects within a mayor's one month term in office.^[18]

Node buildings

Alpha-2 Service buildings.^[19]^[20]

The important thing with the service building system for us is that it's a way to shape your node like a character; and to give you an exclusive niche that you can carve out in the world; or a niche that you fight over. If you go down this weaponsmithing path and you build your node to be this mecca of weaponsmithing and the node three doors down builds it, there's reason for you to conflict over it. They're taking your business. Or maybe you are in a zone and there isn't a weaponsmithing thing anywhere near you, and you do want to start to carve that path for yourself to make your node a place people visit and come to.^[20] – Chris Justo

Service buildings within a node are either default buildings that come with the node, or they are constructed buildings, which are initiated by the mayor and built by players.^[19]^[20]^[21]^[22]^[23]^[24]^[25] Service buildings are further broken down into two main types:^[19]^[20]

Active service buildings are service buildings that players directly interact with. These are further broken down into Artisanship, Business, Magic, Player housing, and Political categories.^[19]^[20]
Passive service buildings provide passive benefits to the node or its zone of influence. These buildings are broken down into Civic, Cultural, Fabrication, Scholarly, and Vocational.^[19]^[20]

Constructed service buildings are available to every type of node in every location. Where the uniqueness comes in is in some of the default buildings like your node-type building.^[26] – Chris Justo

Service buildings are upgraded by expansions, which are unlocked through the placement of passive service buildings.^[19]^[20]

Building expansions unlock higher tier workstations at the cost of dedicating service building plots.^[27]^[23]

Node service building expansions specialize the building through a tech tree based on the stage of the node.^[28]^[29]

Service buildings incur a regular maintenance cost of node commodities and gold from the node treasury in order to continue operations.^[19]^[30]

Unique node buildings

Alpha-1 Node buildings.^[31]

Each node type has a unique service building associated with it that can be activated at Village (stage 3) of node advancement.^[26] The unique building plays a central role in the progress of civilization for a server realm.^[32]

Freehold buildings

Freehold building types.^[33]^[34]

After you build your house, you can build other buildings on your Freehold. Each building needs the blueprint to start the process. If you have a cosmetic skin you want to use on a building, this is used after placing the blueprint. Once this has been placed, the building will be shown in a non-functional, construction state. Players will need to provide the required materials needed to complete the building construction, for each building on their Freehold. No Freehold has room for every possible option, so players will need to choose how to develop their Freehold by choosing to build specific artisan buildings, business buildings, and creating room for livestock and crops.^[35]

Freehold buildings that can be placed on a freehold plot serve three main purposes.^[36]^[35]^[34]^[37]^[38]^[39]

Freehold buildings require blueprints and materials to construct.^[36]^[35]^[41]

Sheds are present on empty freehold plots to provide storage for materials needed to construct freehold buildings.^[42]
- Caravans can dock with the freehold storage to transfer resources needed to construct freehold buildings.^[36]
Some freehold buildings have multiple tiers, with different footprint sizes.^[34]^[43]
Upgrading a tier will not change the size of the building in terms of footprint, but may increase in height.^[43]
Basements in freehold buildings are to be decided.^[44]

Freehold taxes are calculated based on the number of permits issued for buildings on a freehold.^[36]^[35]^[45]^[46]^[47]^[48]

Buildings that require permits will have additional upkeep costs.^[35]

Freehold building architecture is based on the blueprint for the building.^[34]^[49]

Freehold skins are applied to blueprints matching the type of building: housing, artisanship, and business.^[35]^[34]^[50]^[51]^[49]^[52]
- The vast majority of cosmetic freehold skins are used for the homestead.^[37]
The freehold building blueprints must be obtained in-game first before the cosmetic can be applied.^[49]^[52]^[51]
Players are not locked to the racial appearance of a freehold building blueprint.^[53]

The way we look at it is the freehold is your space so we want you to be able to make it look the way you want it to.^[49] – Jeffrey Bard

Artistic style

Jungle biome concept art.^[54]

I want to make sure that we distinguish between what style is and what graphical fidelity is, because they're two different things. Ashes goes more towards a realistic style. We're not a highly stylized game. We don't have a lot of heavy saturated colors and whimsical designs that are just exaggerated. We try to be more on the realistic side. Not ultra realism, but a bit more on the realistic side.^[55] – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation is a high-fantasy game with a high graphical fidelity. It will not be too stylized or "cartoony".^[56]^[55]^[57]^[58]^[59]^[60]

When we talk about the art style of Ashes, our focus is more on the realism side than it is on heavily saturated colors or highly exaggerated shapes. So, we're not going to be a World of Warcraft environment when it comes to the visuals of the game. That won't change. But, if we're talking about signature fantasy theming, if we're talking about iconic style that we could point to and say, "That's Ashes of Creation, I recognize that." Those elements will be coming online as we continue down the content creation path towards prop sets that are uniquely identifying of different player factions and NPC factions in the world. We may introduce elements of high fantasy type characters as assistant NPC races within nodes, within playable environments. Obviously we have a wide range of mounts that exist within the world as well that are signature style. As well with- we get into different biomes and we see unique foliage types, or in the desert you have unique pink trees that are in the desert location, or the large crystals that are incorporated into the rock faces. Those types of fantasy elements are going to be more pronounced as we continue to refine the world and grow them.^[56] – Steven Sharif

More signature fantasy elements are intended to be introduced into the game over time.^[56]^[55]

I'm not a big fan of highly stylized art.^[59] – Steven Sharif

The game will not have steampunk elements.^[58]

It's not to say that people can't do steampunk well. I've enjoyed some steampunk stuff. I'm a very high fantasy oriented type of storyteller; and the inspiration for Ashes obviously comes from my pathfinder campaigns that I ran long ago; and those are always set in a high fantasy world. So it just compromises what I believe is the perspective of the storytelling in the environment.^[58] – Steven Sharif

Intrepid Studios does not use AI for art production.^[61]

We do not use AI for production, except in unique internal cases when communicating fast reference material.^[61] – Steven Sharif

Artistic influences

Asian influenced Ren'Kai architecture.^[62]

Character races are super important. These are the choices that we make at the onset of our adventure in an MMORPG: what race- not just mechanically aligns with our decisions, if those races have game mechanics behind them from a stat perspective, but visually and culturally and historically: What are these? What do these races represent? So it's important that visually they're distinct. And everyone's seen fantasy games do Elves, so everyone's seen them do Humans, everyone's seen them do Orcs: There's an established expectation almost behind what these traditional fantasy races represent; and there's a risk, because whenever you're creating a new IP or a new story or a new world- a new Universe; a realm in which things don't have to always be the norm, you can take a little bit of creative liberty to redefine some of the aspects of a particular race; and that can be a good thing, because it's something that is new to players. It's something that is unique to the realm that we're building- the surroundings that you have. So what we wanted to do was push a little bit more on the unique side of what the Py'rai would look like from a visual perspective.^[63] – Steven Sharif

Aelan architecture has a French medieval influence.^[64] Lion iconography is a core feature of Aelan history.^[65]
Dünir have a Nordic cultural influence.^[66]
Empyreans have a Greco-Roman imperialistic feeling.^[67]
The Kaelar have a European influence.^[68]
The Niküa have a Polynesian influence.^[69]^[67]
The Py'Rai have a Navajo Native American influence.^[67] Py'Rai architecture has a woodland inspiration.^[70]^[71]
Pyrian architecture has a Greco-Roman influence.^[72]
Ren'Kai architecture has an Asian influence.^[62]
The Vaelune have a Middle Eastern influence.^[73]
The Vek have a Mesoamerican influence.^[73]

You will see in the different races that are available from a player character standpoint a lot of different influences that reflect many cultures in the world: Not just European, not just Africa, not Mesoamerican. These cultures are going to be present in many of the races.^[74] – Steven Sharif

The idea is just to find a base component in the real world as a starting point and then to begin to fantasize.^[64] – Steven Sharif