Ruin

This page was last verified for Vintage Story version 1.21.6.

Ruins
Structure	Surface, Underground

Ruins are what remains of villages, fiefdoms, and other settlements that had existed before the effects of the Rot and the Rust, laid desolate and distorted in their wake. These are a variety of structures generated by the game at-start and can be found scattered over the earth and in dark, tight places beneath in the many caves, pits, and tunnels.

These serve as the earliest and sometimes best source of lore, explicitly in the form of Lore books that provide accounts of the past through several viewpoints, and implicitly in the way that the player gets a sense of the scale of what happened before the start of the game, deduced by the dilapidated state and often-dark nature that these places display.

Ruin Varieties

Ruins have above-ground or surface structures that are relatively easy for the player to access, as well as below-ground structures that are more rewarding but are often accompanied by monsters. Most are the remnants of what appear to be homes and religious chapels (above ground), or squalid dwellings and places of research (below ground).

While much bigger than is colloquially considered a 'ruin', vast structures such as the Resonance Archives and the decrepit complex of The Lazaret are locations that provide both lore and directly progress the game's plot.

Surface Ruins

Surface Ruins are found scattered across the world and their frames and foundations are made of stone-variants that match the local, dominant geography of their region. These structures regularly contain cracked vessels, torch holders, ruined chests, rusty gears , skeletons, and ruined weapons, children's toys, and dolls.

Not all items are initially visible as it takes excavating into the lower level to uncover a hidden basement. Sometimes these appear merely as places people once stored grain and tools, but others give a more harrowing picture, being the resting site of families who holed themselves up inside.

There are many kinds of ruins, some common, some rare. The most common type is of a building foundation, a piece of wall, or a section of ancient bridge, crumbled and falling. Rarer ruins include seemingly sacred or religious sites, including burial mounds or barrows, made of smooth stone. These ruins often contain seeds or common raw materials, and sometimes have bony soil and/or cobble skull blocks. Bony soil, when panned , is how the player uncovers written accounts of the past, albeit fragmented.

Larger structures in better shape also appear, often with a greater amount or better quality of loot, regularly featuring collections of bony soil where people had once been. There are often more than one cracked vessel, one at ground-level and another perched higher up on what had once been a second floor or within a tower wall.

Large ruins are more likely than small ruins to have hidden basements, as the main structure is larger and is sometimes accompanied by several satellite structures. Depending on how the world generates, some of these may be partly submerged in the shallow areas of a lake, implying either flooding from recent rainfall or the collective ruins' entire location shifted by the same anomalies that affected the Resonance Archives. Either way, the player has to dig into the lakebed or into the shoreline to reach any basements.

• 
  Rocktyped (1.18.0)
• 
  Ruined foundation
• 
  Section of old bridge
• 
  Castle ruins
• 
  A church in decent shape
• 
  Ancient temple

Underground Ruins

Underground Ruins are found throughout the world, connected to caverns, tunnels, and vertical pits. These ruins are often full of aged planks , various kinds of aged furniture , paintings , cracked vessels , and other decorative items that are impossible to acquire otherwise, making it well worth the time to hunt them down and loot their contents.

Of particular note are forms of aged wood and planks, which are used for various special recipes such as wooden paths . Glazed variants of storage vessels--the intact counterpart to ruined vessels--are also found in places like these and come in an array of colors and patterns suitable for casual looters and collectors alike. These do not shatter when picked up and can be used by the player in the same way they would with a storage vessel they made themselves.

Underground ruins, like the basements of their surface counterparts, speak to a harrowing world of survival and death. Ruined bedframes and meager straw bedding attest to these places not just being of work or mining, but where people actually lived. Homes are built into the tunnels, natural or hand-excavated. Skeletons or skulls lie next to shelves with pots once full of a meal, now rotten . These conditions provide a glimpse into the pre-game backdrop of any lore and loot that players uncover.

• 
  Reworked (1.19.0)
• 
  A small dining room with the ceiling removed

Version History

1.20 Series

Notes on The Lazaret, Surface Ruin generation rebalancing, Loot rebalancing, and signage translation.

• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v120-rc7rc8-lore-update-the-journey-r393/
• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v120-rc6-lore-update-the-journey-r392/
• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v1200-lore-update-the-journey-r391/
• https://info.vintagestory.at/v1dot20

1.19 Series

Notes on reworked Surface Ruins, reworked Underground Ruins, and Ruin Loot rebalancing.

• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v1194-stableified-glue-r380/
• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v1190-rc1-dejank-redux-r369/
• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v1190-dejank-redux-stable-r374/

1.18 Series

Notes on the Resonance Archives and Surface Ruins being 'Rocktyped'.

• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v1180-pre1-lore-update-the-resonance-archives-r342/
• https://www.vintagestory.at/blog.html/news/v1180-lore-update-the-resonance-archives-stable-release-r352/
• https://info.vintagestory.at/v1dot18