Fantasy Friday XIII - Darssen Stronghold (Readers' Choice)

[Alex Walz]

FANTASY FRIDAY XIII
The Stronghold of Darssen

This week we're going with a Readers' Choice showcase and taking a look at Darssen, the NPC stronghold that received the most votes when we asked readers what stronghold they would like to see most in our Developer Blog. Located in the human region of the Rollingplain, Darssen is a town of romance and fairytale. Bordering the elven land of Nhob'ru, stories abound of forbidden liaisons between elf and human. Consequently, it is the haven and breeding ground of bards and minstrels, as well as adventure seekers and ne'er-do-wells. But gold does not run thick, and the wooden walls of this small stronghold reflect its poverty. Though its hilltop stance is adequate against small assaults, a sieging army would meet scant resistance.

The human town of Darssen, as seen from the MMORTS World Map, towering over the Rollingplain region.

One of the smallest major strongholds in Dawn of Fantasy, Darssen consists of two layers of palisade walls and one central, cliff-top keep.

Within this keep, there is the town hall and the king unit used in skirmish matches. There's also access to the stronghold's walls, which have a great advantage peering over the rest of the town.

Darssen is a self-sustaining town with a lucrative farming and mining industry with farm land surrounding the town and a reserve of farms and gold mines within the first layer of its walls.

Although its defenses are weak, the only entrances to Darssen force enemy armies to cram into narrow gates, making them easy targets for archers and siege mechanisms.

Darssen's second entrance typically faces less human resistance, but the cliff leading up to it is very narrow and treacherous.

Darssen's cliff-side promenade adds to the appeal of this fairytale town as well provides excellent natural defenses.

[GPS51]

Looking very finished. One quick question for here. If I rolled my seige towers up to the cliff could I fire on the wall guarders for the keep?

[blackfang]

I would definitely like to kill all the inhabitants and sack their food! Then they would starve forever

[welshie]

Yay the town that i used in my stories got the Fantasy friday!!! <3

[Kaznafein]

Very nice, I don't know if someone asked but what do you get if you successfully siege one of these built in cities. I doubt you get to keep the city but maybe you can and it shows up on your world map as your city? Or do you just plunder the city.

[szebus]

Nice looking town, can't wait to visit it.

[welshie]

Originally Posted by Kaznafein

Very nice, I don't know if someone asked but what do you get if you successfully siege one of these built in cities. I doubt you get to keep the city but maybe you can and it shows up on your world map as your city? Or do you just plunder the city.

plunder im affraid

[Swift sword]

Pretty nice looking town indeed. Looks almost like triple wall-pretty easy to defend with those narrow gates. Not many defenders though-we couldn't possibly need multiple players for that one, right?

[Josh Warner]

Correct you'll 'only' get a large amount of resources, possibly units. It's necessary for gameplay reasons, it also allows multiple people to be sieging to the same city in different instances rather than limiting it to like in other mmorpgs a rare spawn that people camp at and only a handful ever get to try it.

The idea of extra cities players can fight over and actually have trade hands is something that'll be looked into, but the main NPC cities that are used in quite a few quests simply will not be changing hands.


Also, darrsen is almost impossible to lose as the defenders done right, still need to adjust some stuff, and probably the most difficult to attack which I think is great. It's hard to tell from the screenshots, but it has a lower courtyardish area below a giant cliff face with one relatively thin ramp heading up. The inner keep is so high up that attacking siege weapons very rarely are able to land a hit, and enemy archers don't have enough range to hit anything on the inner keep without going all the way to the ramp which means being tightly packed and taking a lot of fire before being able to return any. That said, it's my favorite to attack and the only lay siege since my first few games when I was still learning that I've actually managed to lose.

[Kire]

Yay darssen =), nice overview but those soldiers are way to big compared to structures =P, there are doors in size of their legs. And does the hero on picture in left up corner smiling?=P Beside, damn you Alex .... you showed tactics to orcs x.x now they have advantage.
Since most lower layers are made form wood and grassy stuff ..... can they be burned, i mean whole place up? ..... a harmless elf just wondering ....... =)
And blackfang ... if you kill all inhabitants, how can they starve forever if they are dead?=P