Cinderwild/docs/PROGRESSION_DESIGN.md

# Progression and challenges design

Status: **P1 (iron) built**; P2-P5 are proposals.

*As built in P1:*
- Iron nuggets (70, in the scree under the rim), clay (60, on the lake
  shore) and rusty boulders (about a quarter of the boulders, mostly near
  the rim; iron ore when mined) are on every island, old worlds included.
- Charcoal kiln (2 wood -> 1 charcoal, 20 s), smelter (1 ore or 3 nuggets +
  1 charcoal -> 1 bar, 30 s) and forge. Kiln and smelter open like chests
  and work on their own (also through a slept night and on a server).
- At the forge: iron axe and pickaxe (twice as fast), iron spear, iron
  arrows (x1.5 damage, the bow uses them first), nails, lantern.
- **Durability** (decided: yes): stone tools 60 uses, club 80, wooden spear
  50, bow 100, rod 80, iron tools 200 (iron spear 180). A bar on the slot;
  a warning near the end; it breaks at 0. Repair in the crafting panel's
  Repair tab: stone and wood at a workbench (a flint, wood or fibre), iron
  at the forge (an iron bar). Wear stays with the item in chests, graves,
  on the ground (a thrown spear) and in saves.
- Not yet: the cooking pot and stews, the iron-banded door (with P3, when
  something can break doors), iron armour.

Today the island runs out of goals after a few days: once you have stone
tools, a hut, a bow and a fire, the only threats are wolves at night, the
cold and your diet. This plan adds a **second tier of materials** (iron and
cut stone) that makes you go somewhere risky to get them, and **new
adversaries and hazards** that grow over the days, so there's always a next
thing to build toward and a reason to.

All content stays procedural or CC0, data-driven (`data/items.json`,
`data/recipes.json`, new `data/creatures.json`), and runs through Actions,
so it works on a server the same way everything else does after M2.4/M2.5.

## 1. The progression in one picture
```
 stone tools ──> find iron (nuggets, rust-streaked boulders, the barrow)
      │                    │
      │           clay + stone ──> charcoal kiln, smelter
      │                    │        (ore + charcoal -> iron bar, takes time and fuel)
      │                    v
      │                  forge ──> iron axe / pickaxe / spear / arrows,
      │                    │        nails, hinges, lantern, cooking pot
      │                    v
      └──────────> stonecutter (needs iron) ──> stone walls, floors,
                                                 pillars, stairs, hearth
```
Each step needs something from a harder, more dangerous part of the island,
so progression and challenge pull on each other.

## 2. Iron
**Where it comes from:**
- **Iron nuggets**: small ground pickups in the scree at the foot of the
  mountain rim and in stream beds. A handful per day; enough for your first
  bars, not for a base. (Regrow slowly, like flint.)
- **Rust-streaked boulders**: a new resource node, red-brown streaks in the
  rock, mostly high on the rim slopes and around the wolf den. Needs a stone
  pickaxe; gives stone plus 2-4 iron ore. These are the main supply.
- **The barrow** (§4): iron scrap and a few ready bars inside, guarded.

**Clay** (new): lumps on the lake shore and in the shallows, picked by hand.

**Processing** (all new pieces, placed like a campfire, state on the server):
| Piece | Recipe | Does |
|---|---|---|
| Charcoal kiln | 10 stone, 6 clay | wood in, charcoal out (1 per 2 wood, 30 s each) |
| Smelter | 15 stone, 10 clay, 2 iron nuggets | iron ore or 3 nuggets + 1 charcoal -> 1 iron bar (45 s); burns charcoal, goes out in heavy rain without a roof |
| Forge (anvil + hearth) | 6 iron bars, 10 stone, 4 wood | the station for iron recipes |

Smelting **takes real time** and the smelter keeps working while you're
away (like a campfire burning), so you load it, go and do something else,
and come back. On a server everyone can see the glow and use it.

**What iron makes** (at the forge):
| Item | Recipe | Why you want it |
|---|---|---|
| Iron Axe | 2 iron, 2 wood | tier 2: fells trees in half the hits, better weapon (14) |
| Iron Pickaxe | 3 iron, 2 wood | tier 2: mines rust boulders fast, and **granite** outcrops (cut stone) |
| Iron Spear | 2 iron, 3 wood | 26 damage, 40 thrown |
| Iron Arrows x10 | 1 iron, 4 sticks, 4 feathers | +50% damage |
| Nails x10 | 1 iron | building upgrades (below) |
| Iron Lantern | 2 iron, 1 resin | hands-free light you hang on a wall or carry; wolves hesitate like a torch, rain doesn't put it out |
| Cooking Pot | 3 iron | placed over a fire: **stews** that count for two diet groups at once (e.g. meat + greens), so a balanced diet is easier once you've earned it |
| Iron-banded Door | 2 iron, 4 wood, nails | strong door (wolves, later raiders, can't break it) |
| Iron armour (later) | bars + hide | damage reduction; heavy, slows stamina regen |

**Tool durability** (new, recommended): tools and weapons wear with use and
break (stone ~60 uses, iron ~200). Repair at a workbench (stone) or forge
(iron) for a little material. This is what makes iron worth getting rather
than a nice-to-have, and keeps you coming back to the forge.

## 3. Stone building
**Cut stone** comes from granite outcrops (iron pickaxe) or from cutting
ordinary stone at a **stonecutter** (8 wood, 4 iron, 10 stone).

New pieces (same 2 m grid, snap with the wood ones):
| Piece | Recipe | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Stone floor | 4 cut stone | |
| Stone wall | 6 cut stone | |
| Stone pillar | 3 cut stone | carries load: resets support for what's on top |
| Stone stairs | 4 cut stone | first real stairs (also a wooden version) |
| Stone hearth | 10 cut stone | an indoor fire: heat in a radius 1.5x a campfire's, never rained out, cooks |
| Arch / doorway | 6 cut stone | takes a wood or iron door |

**Support rules:** stone that touches the ground has support 1 and loses
only 5% going up, so you can build tall stone towers and use **stone at the
bottom, wood on top** (Valheim style). Wood can't hold stone up: a stone
piece on a wooden one has no support. Stone pillars inside a wooden hall
let it span further. Interior walls and doors work as they do now.

**Why bother:** stone is sturdier (§4: things that break walls can't break
stone), it's warmer (a stone room counts as better shelter, a little extra
warmth), it doesn't burn (§5, lightning), and it lets you build big.

**Wooden upgrades** too, using nails: windows (light, still sheltered),
wooden stairs, fences and a **palisade wall + gate** (a ring round your base,
taller than a wolf can jump).

## 4. Adversaries
Each one is a different kind of problem, not just more HP.
| Adversary | Where / when | What it does | What beats it | Drops |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Wolves** (today) | nights from day 4 | pack circles, darts in | fire, torch, walls | pelt |
| **Alpha wolf** | every 7th night (the "wolf moon": the moon turns red, a big howl) | leads the pack, 3x HP, **breaks wooden doors** | iron door, stone walls, a fight with iron weapons | alpha pelt (warmest cloak), fang |
| **Bear** | daytime, deep forest near the rim; one per island | wanders, sniffs out food: **raids unattended chests with food and campfires with meat** | a palisade, stone storage, or a hard fight (spears, arrows from cover) | big hide (rugs, warm bedding: better rest), fat (resin/lantern fuel), lots of meat |
| **Barrow guards** | the **barrow**: an ancient burial mound with a stone ring, generated from the seed (like the den) | skeletal guards wake if you enter at night (or always after day 10); slow, hit hard, ignore torches | daylight raids, blunt weapons (club does +50% to bone) | iron scrap, a few iron bars, a **barrow key piece** (§6) |
| **Crows / foxes** | anytime, near food | steal berries and raw meat left on the ground or in open fires | a closed chest | — |

Creatures run on the server (needs M2.5's server-side creature framework),
so on a server everyone faces the same bear and the same alpha.

## 5. Hazards and pressure (not creatures)
- **Food spoilage**: raw meat and fish rot after 2 in-game days (berries
  3, mushrooms 4). A **smoking rack** (wood, fibre) and **salt** (from the
  sea-cliff rocks) preserve them. Cooked food keeps longer. Makes storing
  food a choice, and feeds the bear/crow raids.
- **Food poisoning**: raw meat sometimes makes you sick (stamina regen
  halved, can't eat for a minute). Cooking fixes it.
- **Blizzards**: on cold days a blizzard can roll in: visibility drops,
  warmth falls fast outside, snow piles on roofs. Being sheltered matters.
- **Lightning**: in storms, lightning can strike tall things near the rim;
  a struck tree or **wooden** piece catches fire and burns for a while
  (stone doesn't). Optional (§8), as losing a base to weather can feel unfair.
- **Hard winters**: every ~12 days, three cold days in a row (snow down to
  the valley, the lake edge freezes, fewer animals). A seasonal goal: stock
  food and fuel before it.

## 6. Something to aim for: the Old Stag (optional boss)
Three **barrow key pieces** (from barrow chests) open the **standing
stones** on the rim. At night they summon the **Old Stag**, a huge antlered
spirit: charges, summons a wolf pack, has phases. Beating it drops its
antler: **antler pickaxe** (mines anything, even granite, fast) and a
trophy. The world remembers it was beaten (a message on a server).

It's a milestone, not a gate: nothing is locked behind it except bragging
rights and the best pickaxe. More bosses can come with new worldlets.

## 7. Phases and tests
| Phase | Delivers | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| **P1 Iron** | nuggets, rust boulders, clay, charcoal kiln, smelter, forge, iron tools/weapons/arrows/nails/lantern/pot, durability and repair | a test smelts a bar from ore it mined and crafts an iron axe; the axe fells a tree in half the hits and wears out after ~200 uses |
| **P2 Stone** | stonecutter, granite, stone pieces, stairs, pillars, hearth, stone-on-wood rule, windows, palisade | a stone tower 10 m high stands; stone on wood refuses; a hearth keeps a stone room Sheltered and Warm in a blizzard |
| **P3 Adversaries** | alpha wolf + wolf moon, bear and food raids, crows/foxes, the barrow and its guards | the alpha breaks a wooden door but not an iron one; the bear empties an unguarded food chest and ignores one behind a palisade |
| **P4 Hazards** | spoilage and preserving, food poisoning, blizzards, hard winters, (lightning) | meat rots on schedule and keeps on the rack; a blizzard drops warmth outdoors and not in a hearth room |
| **P5 Boss** | key pieces, standing stones, the Old Stag | a scripted fight test reaches the end and drops the antler |

**Order:** P1 and P2 are items, recipes and pieces through Actions, so they
work online straight away and can come any time (before or after M2.5).
P3 and P5 are creatures, so they should come **after M2.5**, built directly
on the server-side creature code instead of being written twice. P4 can come
any time; spoilage on a server runs with the shared clock.

## 8. Questions for you
1. **Durability:** tools wear out and need repairing (recommended: it's
   what makes iron matter), or tools last forever?
2. **Lightning and fire:** can storms set wooden buildings alight, or keep
   weather from destroying bases?
3. **Raids:** should adversaries damage buildings (the alpha breaking wooden
   doors, the bear raiding chests), or only threaten the player?
4. **The boss:** worth having (the Old Stag), or keep it to the wild
   island with no boss fights?
5. **Order:** P1 iron + P2 stone now, then M2.5, then the creatures? Or
   M2.5 first?