Progression and challenges design

Status: P1 (iron) and P2 (stone) built; P3-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.

As built in P2:

Stonecutter (workbench: 8 wood, 4 iron, 10 stone) cuts 2 stone into a block of cut stone. No granite outcrops yet: the stonecutter is the only source.
At the stonecutter: stone floor (4), wall (6), pillar (3), stairs (4), window (5), doorway with a wooden door (6 + 4 wood), hearth (10).
At the workbench: wooden stairs, window and palisade (with nails), a wooden post, a palisade gate.
Support: stone loses 5% going up (wood 10%); wood can't hold stone up ("Stone needs stone or the ground under it"); through a pillar any step up or down counts as vertical, so a post under a span carries it.
Hearth: a campfire (fuel, cooking, wolves) with 1.5x the heat radius that rain never speeds up. A sheltered room with mostly stone walls is 6 warmer. Shelter rays now run 0.6 m up, under window sills, so a room with windows still counts.
Palisade: 3 m tall, blocks like a wall online too. No fences.

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

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

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