Greetings Dungeon-builder! Welcome to our first long-form tutorial blog and video about constructing new Dungeons and Lairs.

Follow along below as Atronos describes how to build a Lair from the ground-up, check out his video tutorial to see a second structure take shape, and start building and submitting your own designs – they could very well end up in Trove!

LET’S START WITH A LAIR
So you’ve seen the videos and streams, played the game, maybe even made some weapons and decor. Are you ready to try your hand at creating a Lair or Dungeon, but unsure how to go about it? This guide is for you. Together we’ll go step-by-step through my process of creating a Lair, from ideation through modelling of the terrain, connecting the pieces, placing decor, and filling the playspace with challenges and adventure.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN
This guide assumes that you are already familiar with the process of creating assets for Trove. If you haven’t tried your hand yet at creating and submitting something for the game, I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with the submissions process by creating some equipment, hairstyles, or decor. This will help you gain proficiency with your tool of choice, become acquainted with our art guidelines, submissions, and feedback process, and cultivate your personal style.

THE BIG PICTURE
When creating a Dungeon or Lair, the first question to ask yourself is “What will I make?” Chances are you already have an idea that you want to bring into existence, but before you open your tool of choice, consider the following:

- Lairs and Dungeons should be related thematically to one of our existing or confirmed future biomes. We need to be able to place your creation somewhere that exists in the game.

- The same rules that apply to other creations apply to Dungeons and Lairs. As such, avoid using things that break immersion or detract from the fun, quirky atmosphere of Trove. Real-world religious and political iconography will get your Dungeon rejected.

- This also goes for other people’s property. It’s ok to reference and remix influences from popular culture and other media, but lifting things wholesale is not.

THEMING
When creating a Dungeon or Lair, think about how you can ground it in the world of Trove and how it can tell a story. A really good example of this is the Eco Spires Dungeon, along with its accompanying Lair (by Tribe). Eco Spires is a technology-themed Dungeon, which makes it fit well in an existing area of Trove, the Neon City. On top of that, however, it references the other biomes in the game by including areas that represent them. Similarly, Tribe was at one point working on a Lair that accompanies the Eco Spires, consisting of a single biome-orb like those seen in the Eco Spires Dungeon. This is solid theming, in that the Dungeon references locales in the world beyond the biome where it is located, and the Lair references the Dungeon. The two areas work to tell a cohesive “story” that the player can infer from adventuring in both, without the need to display any text on the screen.

For a full explanation of the style and technical aspects of Dungeon creation, refer to our Style Guidelines – http://trove.wikia.com/wiki/Style_guidelines – and the Lair and Dungeon Creation guide –http://trove.wikia.com/wiki/Lair_and_Dungeon_creation. I will be touching on most of the foundations mentioned in these documents in passing, but those will be invaluable references while you are working on your creation.

(To illustrate this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the process of creating a new Lair, explaining some of the decisions behind the choices I make.)

THE IDEA
To help me decide what to make, I look at the Dungeons and Lairs we already have. I decide to make something robot-themed to help populate the Neon City biome, since it’s relatively new to the game and could use more adventuring areas for players to play in.

The maximum size for a Lair is a 30×30 area up to 30 voxels below ground and 60 above ground. Since we already have a good number of Lairs that extend underground, I decide to go up this time and take advantage of the extra space we can use when going up instead of down.

So! I want something robotic that towers above ground. My first thought is a robotic obelisk, but I eventually decide to go with a giant robot walker of some kind – a Lair that looks like it could just up and go at any given time. It ties in nicely with the theme of evil robots. In my mind, I’m picturing it as part of the same robotic invasion force that has been stealing chunks of other biomes (the one that created the Eco Spires Dungeon!).

Having decided on an idea, the next step is to start laying down some framework for your Lair.

BUILDING A FOUNDATION
To begin, open your voxel editor of choice – I mainly use Qubicle, but any of the editors mentioned here will work. I start by creating a blank volume of the absolute maximum size allowed for the Lair, so I know how much room I have to work with. In this case, I create a blank volume of 30x30x90.

Lairs and Dungeons need to extend below the surface of the ground at least 10 voxels in order to account for when they get placed on the sides of hills or mountains, so I need to take into consideration the 30-voxel high part of the Lair that can extend underground. After creating the volume, I slide it down so it is aligned with the plane, extending 60 voxels above it and 30 voxels below it. This isn’t strictly necessary, but again, it helps me keep track of the space I have to work with – the volume reflects the height and depth of the Dungeon relative to the ground level of the world where it is placed.

One of the first things to take into consideration when creating Lairs is that the major quest area has a minimum size of 21×21. This leaves very little wiggle room within the larger constraint of 30×30 overall area for a Lair, so chunking out the major quest area first is usually a good idea. The rest of the structure of your Lair can grow organically from there.

I decide to make my boss area a circle 29 voxels in diameter. That gives me the necessary 21×21 area for the quest, and the rest I can use to create a way for players to access the room, either with some stairs or a chute or some other vertical access point. Since I’m going with 29×29 for the boss area, I also change the width and depth of my boundary volume to match that. Using an odd number for the width and depth of your Lair also has the advantage that you know exactly where the center of the Lair is going to be. This will be useful when the time comes to place plugs and sockets. For now, we’ll keep track of where the center of the Lair is at ground level by placing a bright red voxel at that location.

Knowing where the center of your Lair is has another advantage – you can use symmetry to cut your work in half, if your Lair is something that can be symmetrical. A giant robot walker definitely can be, so with that in mind I start work on sculpting the legs.

Another important thing that comes into play when creating Lairs is making them accessible to all players. The main way this comes into effect is making sure that a starting player with no extra jumps or a mount can traverse the Dungeon successfully. With this in mind, I sculpt the legs to be a simple jumping puzzle that can be navigated to reach the entrance to the actual adventuring areas of the Lair. Once I’m happy with the basic form of the legs, I copy it, mirror it, and paste the copy beside the existing leg.

Once the legs are done, next up is connecting them with the major quest area. With this in mind, I make a little alcove in the corner farthest from the entrance to the body of the walker, with the intention of putting a portal in there that will connect the bottom and the top of the walker.

With the legs pretty much done, I can start working on the major quest area. Right now my Lair is a little sparse, so I can add another minor adventure area on top of the major one, and then the portal from the bottom area can connect to that instead of to the boss area directly. Since the boss area is already chunked out, I copy and paste it with the intention of using that as the basis for the second adventure area.

I now have the basic structure for the Lair in place. No evil robot walker is complete without an impressive array of weaponry, so after shaping the roof of the second adventure area into a dome and creating an access hatch between it and the areas inside, I model a couple of weapons atop it. This is also a good opportunity to start giving the outside a more distinct and interesting appearance than just a plain grey surface. Since a lot of the robot decor already has the glowy circuitry line motifs on it, I decide to go with that. This will help with theming, as described earlier. The robot walker doesn’t simply exist as a solitary entity, but rather it is tied in with the rest of the Neon City biome environment.

Once the first pass on the top area of the Lair is complete, I can take a look at how it fits in with the rest of the parts. On second look, it’s possible that as a whole it might be too tall. After a bit of thought, I decide to create a second main adventure area that is combined with the top area. This means we will have two possible major variants of the Lair. To differentiate them, I decide that the top one might be a command unit of some sort, and to differentiate it further from the other type, I replace the weapon ports on top of it with a communications dish and a different version of the railgun.

With that done, it’s time to add the finishing touches: some viewing ports that I’ll make transparent using property maps, extending the glowing circuitry lines to the rest of the walker’s parts, assorted other details on the outside, finishing the interior layouts, and creating the terrain base that will anchor the walker on the terrain of the world.

While I’m at it, I can mark the spot where the red plug – the one that connects the Lair to the world – is going to go. The red plug should be in the center of the area of your Lair, and in terms of height, remember that the red plug’s height will be at the same height as the ground. With that in mind, I mark the center of the supporting ground on which the walker stands with a bright red voxel. You can do this for all the other plugs and sockets you need to place. It is particularly helpful for more complex Lair and Dungeon layouts, but for this one just the red will be enough.

INTO THE METAFORGE!
At this point, I export the property maps and run them through the .blueprint converter. Before heading into the Metaforge, I highly recommend you make copies of all your blueprint files and rename the copies (filename)_template.blueprint. These are the .blueprint files you will be editing, leaving your original .blueprints untouched. That way if you save your work and realize later that something went horribly wrong, you don’t have to re-export your .qb files into .blueprint files. The templates will also come in handy if you choose to make variations of your basic .blueprints in terms of decor, traps, or minor geometry changes without having to make entirely different variations of each Lair piece. With our _template.blueprint files in hand, it’s time to open up the Metaforge. Fire up Trove, and once you have logged into the world, enter the command ‘/mf’ followed by Enter.

With the Metaforge open, I can drag any of the .blueprint files I have created into it, and that will load the .blueprint at the same scale as it will appear in the world. I like to work from the outside in, so I load up the legs blueprint. The first thing I do is replace the red voxel we placed when we started building with the red plug, oriented in the same direction as the front of the walker. I also place the GM Quest Portal – the one that will allow players to exit the Lair quickly once they have defeated the major adventure area – somewhere that is relatively safe and out of the way. If the entrance to your Lair or Dungeon allows it, you can place the exit portal somewhere where players exiting the Dungeon can get a good visual of the adventure they have just conquered. With both of these placed, use the /save command to save your changes to the .blueprint file.

Once those two are out of the way, it’s time to place the socket that connects the legs section to the next area. I tend to use plugs and sockets in order – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Fuchsia – just because it helps me keep track of where I am in relation to the entrance of the Dungeon. With that in mind, I place the orange socket above the legs section, near the front. I place it two voxels above the top of the section, because I know both of the main adventure areas have floors that will occupy the first layer above the legs. The fact that I have an odd-numbered area of 29×29 also helps because I know exactly where the center point is in terms of width and height, and the cylindrical shape of all the sections of the Lair means I can align that position easily in all of them.

With the orange socket placed, I /save again (saving often is highly recommended), and I load in the next section of the Lair. I haven’t placed any of the adventure elements of the Lair, because I like to make several variants of each section in order to make the most of Trove’s Dungeon randomization engine. Saving the current changes to the .blueprint file makes a template that I can then duplicate and edit without having to unnecessarily redo any of the work I have already done.

I do have two major adventure areas, each of which is connected to the leg section, and thus each will need its own orange plug to make the connection. The major difference between the two is that one is self-contained, and the other is connected to the secondary adventure area. With this in mind, I load the standalone version of the major adventure area, place the orange plug and the other GM Quest portal, and /save it. I then do the same for the one that will be connected to the second minor adventure area, and in that one I also place a yellow socket. I then /save that one, load the second adventure area, place a yellow plug that aligns with the yellow socket in the previous area, and /save that too.

The basic structure of the Dungeon is complete. Now I can make the .dungeon file for the Lair, load it, and have the Metaforge generate the entire Dungeon. This will allow me to run the Dungeon from start to finish, find any glaring errors, and fix them.

To create the .dungeon file, create a new text file, and rename it [Lairname].dungeon – in this case, robowalker.dungeon.

In this file, enter the names of all your blueprints, like this:

[Dungeon]
Type = Lair

[Piece0]
Blueprint = legs_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = 1

[Piece0]
Blueprint = boss_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = 1

[Piece0]
Blueprint = boss_02
Quantity = 1
Weight = 1

[Piece0]
Blueprint = head_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = 1

Save the file, then drag it onto the window where you have the Metaforge running. If everything is set up correctly, the Metaforge will generate your Dungeon from the pieces. If, however, there is a problem with any of your pieces, the chat window will return an error, most likely “Unable to create layout.” If this is the case, you can use the command /timelapseDungeon with the path to your .dungeon file. This will show you a timelapse of the Metaforge attempting to assemble your Dungeon from the listed parts, and should help you troubleshoot where the problem is.

Alternatively, you can pare down the .dungeon file to only list the first piece – the one with the red plug – and remove any sockets you have added to it. You can then load the .dungeon file to see if the problem is resolved. If it is, you can gradually add pieces and plug/socket combinations one by one, and find out where the problem is. The process of troubleshooting may require some trial and error. Keep in mind that if you are getting persistent errors, the most likely cause is that parts of your Lair are generating outside of the designated Lair volume. Make sure your plugs and sockets are aligned correctly, and try moving them around one voxel at a time.

Once you have your Dungeon generating correctly, it’s time to do another pass on each of your .blueprint files to place decor and adventure elements. I prefer to do another pass for decor, and once that is complete, I create duplicates of each piece and create several variants that each focuses on a different aspect of adventuring. Some variants are more combat-heavy, while others are more focused on jump puzzles or avoiding damage from turrets.

Once I have all my variants, I go back to the .dungeon file and add them. I also vary the Weight values for each of the pieces listed, so the Dungeon randomizer has an equal chance of choosing any of them when generating a Dungeon. The .dungeon file ends up looking like this:

[Dungeon]
Type = Lair

[Piece0]
Blueprint = legs_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece1]
Blueprint = legs_01a
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece2]
Blueprint = legs_01b
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece3]
Blueprint = legs_01c
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece4]
Blueprint = boss_02
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece5]
Blueprint = boss_02a
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece6]
Blueprint = boss_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece7]
Blueprint = boss_01a
Quantity = 1
Weight = .25

[Piece8]
Blueprint = head_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = .33

[Piece9]
Blueprint = head_01a
Quantity = 1
Weight = .33

[Piece10]
Blueprint = head_01b
Quantity = 1
Weight = .33

When the Metaforge runs the .dungeon file, it will now generate one of any of the possible combinations of pieces, providing some nice variety. At this point, it is a good idea to load the .dungeon file into the Metaforge and do a run through the Lair with your Metaforge character. Since the metaforager doesn’t have +jump or access to a mount by default, if you can reach the end of the Dungeon with the metaforager, you have successfully created a Dungeon that any player can complete with no gear requirements. You should repeat this process a few times until you are certain that you have seen each of your Lair pieces and traversed it successfully at least once. To this end, you can edit the Weight values for the relevant parts you want to test, making it more likely the one you want to test will get used by the random Dungeon generator. For example, using our robowalker Lair .dungeon file information, if I wanted to test the boss_02 area for completability, I could edit the boss area piece entries like this:

[Piece4]
Blueprint = boss_02
Quantity = 1
Weight = 1

[Piece5]
Blueprint = boss_02a
Quantity = 1
Weight = .001

[Piece6]
Blueprint = boss_01
Quantity = 1
Weight = .001

[Piece7]
Blueprint = boss_01a
Quantity = 1
Weight = .001

This will make boss_02 1000 times more likely to get used in the Dungeon generation process than any of the other pieces, so it should be pretty much guaranteed that your Lair will use that piece instead of the others.

THE REVIEW PROCESSS
Once you’re happy that your Lair can be completed and looks and behaves the way you want it to, it’s time to put it up for review! Go tohttp://www.reddit.com/r/TroveCreations/ and select “Submit a new creation” on the right side of the screen. In your post, you will need to describe the concept behind the Lair or Dungeon and what biome it fits in, as well as links to a good assortment of screenshots showing different parts of the Dungeon – ideally you will have uploaded your screenshots to an image hosting site like imgur. You’ll also need a link to dropbox or some other file sharing service where you have uploaded your .blueprint and .dungeon files so we can load them up in the Metaforge. Once you have submitted your post and set the Lair to review, the Trove Creations mods will look over your files and provide feedback. At this point you may have to go back and fix any glaring problems they point out, and you may need to repeat this part of the process a few times until you get mod approval for your submission.

Once your submission has been mod-approved, Grump will do an art review for it. He’ll mostly be looking out for color use, style, and generally asking “does this look good and is it going to fit into the game smoothly.” Once Grump gives it the Art A-OK, it will get flagged for Design review. At this point, Decoy takes over, and checks for places that may be problematic in terms of gameplay – things like too-narrow play spaces, enemies spawning in strange places, and excess of decor that impacts performance (or our favorite “Deathtrap Dungeon Syndrome,” which is what happens if you line all your corridors with spike traps and line turrets that make it impossible for players to complete). Keep it challenging, but keep it reasonable!

Once Grump and Decoy are happy with the way the Dungeon looks and plays, you’re in the clear! The Dungeon will get added to the game for everyone to enjoy, and you’ll get your just reward. For a Lair you currently get 5,000 Credits, for a Dungeon you get 20,000. To top things off, you’ll get a sweet Dungeon Creator’s Hat. Wear it with pride, knowing that you have forever left your mark on the worlds of Trove!

FINAL THOUGHTS
Hopefully reading through this guide will help you to get an idea of how the process of creating a Lair or Dungeon for Trove works, but text and screenshots can only go so far. The best teacher is experience, and there’s no experience like rolling up your sleeves and trying something out for yourself. Luckily, this isn’t a journey you have to embark on alone – there are quite a few awesome folks on the Trove Creations reddit who can give you pointers or critique your work, and us devs are on there just about every day looking over things. When you’re ready to give Lair creation a try, create a reddit thread, post your work-in-progress, ask questions, get opinions, and keep updating your thread with your progress. Showing how things are made was one of our core visions when we started developing Trove, and it has been a great experience. It can be for you, too.

Be creative, be adventurous, and ask yourself the question: “What will you make?”