Building Subterranean Levels

(i.e. Caves and Basements)

A Tutorial by Stonehand

The cool thing about a cave or basement in UO is that the surrounding area turns very dark, and all you see is the level itself. You can replicate this effect easily in UOX by following the steps in this guide. The guide will be divided into two sections for simplicity. One section will be devoted to the creation of caves, and the other to the creation of basement levels underneath buildings.

For this operation, I recommend the following tools: WorldForge, Xuri's WorldBuilder, and Mini Mythril (for faster repeated operations like 'remove or 'tweak).

Basement Levels

That's all there is to it. But there is one formal side note to add here: If you intend to add a multi-level basement - say five floors down - then START with the lowest level and build upwards. Be sure to place a whole floor (or ceiling) over each level as you go. You won't need additional "no draw" tiles between floors - only the ones you placed initially are necessary. In short, if you are building a five level basement, with walls that are all 20 units tall, you will set the FIRST floor you create to -100 z (depending on the z of your main floor), and then build UPWARDs. The stairwell between each of these levels can be a normal hole in the floor tiles. The ONLY "no draw" tiles you need are the ones between the main level of the house and the first subterranean level below it.

Caves and Caverns

First, lets clarify something. A "cave or cavern" is herein defined as "a subterranean area beneath a mountain range." To create subterranean levels under non-mountainous areas, see the tutorial above.

Well, I hope I didn't leave anything out and I hope all of this is useful to you. The ultimate goal, after all, is to make this aspect of the game work very much like it does on an official OSI shard.