Stairs and ladders - I cannot figure these things out

[Ryan Dorkoski]

I've been playing about 7 hours and have tried several ways to figure out stairs and/or ladders. As a DF veteran, I have tried several strategies - all with no success. And not being able to zoom in to really see what's going on is making this excercise particularly frustrating.

Can someone show a diagram or illustration of how to mine downwards? Because the layers are like this, it makes it frustrating:


--------------

Room

--------------
Floor
--------------

Room

--------------
Floor
--------------

...etc.

Thanks in advance.

[Zamoshvik]

So I believe this game sorta takes the menal work out of the whole planning for stairs. Stairs placed on the floor automatically account for the next level so if you have a stair on floor 1 it is automatically counting towards floor 2

Floor 1 = http://prntscr.com/m6ntmg

Floor 2 = http://prntscr.com/m6ntzz

These are the same stairs set on Floor 1

[MurderfaceMurderfaceMurderface]

Yeah there are no up/down stairs like DF which simplifies things, but you can't stack stairs like you can in DF, must use ladders for that.

[Ryan Dorkoski]

Originally posted by Mosh|Vikalh:

So I believe this game sorta takes the menal work out of the whole planning for stairs. Stairs placed on the floor automatically account for the next level so if you have a stair on floor 1 it is automatically counting towards floor 2

Floor 1 = http://prntscr.com/m6ntmg

Floor 2 = http://prntscr.com/m6ntzz

These are the same stairs set on Floor 1

Yes. This has been my finding. But I'm utterly confused on why this works like this. Thank you for the screenshots. I appreciate it. I'm still confused, though, so I will try to explain.

My most recent thought for a stairplan was a 3x3 plan. Here is how I will refer to the blocks:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

So, 5 will always be a solid wall/column, and I place downstairs on 6 and 4 (on next floor down of course) and just spiral around. When I do this though - I run into the problem/note you describe where the first stairs on 6 is now acting on two levels. Hmm.

Whats a better plan for a quick mining effort?

Thanks for the help.

[Ryan Dorkoski]

Originally posted by MurderfaceMurderfaceMurderface:

Yeah there are no up/down stairs like DF which simplifies things, but you can't stack stairs like you can in DF, must use ladders for that.

Right. I am kind of finding myself wishing there were the combined up/down stairs for efficient travel. The ladder has been the most successful method for me, but it all ends up being super tedious. I kind of wish I could make a 'blueprint'/copy-and-paste of a level to just plop them down.

[Ryan Dorkoski]

Well we just spent far too long investigating and trying things with stairs. Many scribble diagrams and junk saves later, I feel like I haven't learned much. After 7 hours of tinkering here and there with it, I sort of have to throw my hands up. The problem I have is two-fold. I don't quite understand how the stairs work, and it's horribly impeding my abililty to mine. I did far better when I just dug a hole straight down, but that is not satisfying at all.

One last question:

When I put a stair tile on the same level I am standing on (say grass or whatever), it produces an up-stair relative to where I am. Okay. Why when I look one layer down do I see a distorted version of this stair that is non-functional? What is the point of that?

Or is each stair tile an up/down staircase like DF?

Thanks.

[SparkleSoap]

I *think* if you consider the stairs as "up" stairs only the problem is addressed. IE. whatever layer you are standing on and place a staircase, you can only travel up from that location. In order to place down-stairs, you have to dig out where you want to place the stairs, travel to that layer and place the "up" staircase (which now acts as a down staircase from the level above). To add an additional down stair, you have to again dig one layer down (beside the current levels staircase), travel a layer below and put another "up" staircase.

This is the only way I have seemed to be able to get them to work. That being said, any kind of spiral staircase seems to be out of the question at this point.

I love the game, but I think the brainpower needed to build a functional staircase leaves little to be desired. Perhaps I'm still not fully understanding them?

[Ryan Dorkoski]

Originally posted by SparkleSoap:

I *think* if you consider the stairs as "up" stairs only the problem is addressed. IE. whatever layer you are standing on and place a staircase, you can only travel up from that location. In order to place down-stairs, you have to dig out where you want to place the stairs, travel to that layer and place the "up" staircase (which now acts as a down staircase from the level above). To add an additional down stair, you have to again dig one layer down (beside the current levels staircase), travel a layer below and put another "up" staircase.

This is the only way I have seemed to be able to get them to work. That being said, any kind of spiral staircase seems to be out of the question at this point.

I love the game, but I think the brainpower needed to build a functional staircase leaves little to be desired. Perhaps I'm still not fully understanding them?

Right. The problem is that the spiral staircase is a great way (traditionally) to simply get down to lower levels. Anything more complicated tends to take forever - or at least that's what I've found here with Odd Realms so far.

One happy medium is if we had the ability to make 'stamp' templates to just use over and over. It's the long way around, but it would be so much less tedious.

The easier fix is to probably to make 'up', 'down', and 'up/down' stairs. Why reinvent the wheel.

[SparkleSoap]

Originally posted by Ryan Dorkoski:

Originally posted by SparkleSoap:

I *think* if you consider the stairs as "up" stairs only the problem is addressed. IE. whatever layer you are standing on and place a staircase, you can only travel up from that location. In order to place down-stairs, you have to dig out where you want to place the stairs, travel to that layer and place the "up" staircase (which now acts as a down staircase from the level above). To add an additional down stair, you have to again dig one layer down (beside the current levels staircase), travel a layer below and put another "up" staircase.

This is the only way I have seemed to be able to get them to work. That being said, any kind of spiral staircase seems to be out of the question at this point.

I love the game, but I think the brainpower needed to build a functional staircase leaves little to be desired. Perhaps I'm still not fully understanding them?

Right. The problem is that the spiral staircase is a great way (traditionally) to simply get down to lower levels. Anything more complicated tends to take forever - or at least that's what I've found here with Odd Realms so far.

One happy medium is if we had the ability to make 'stamp' templates to just use over and over. It's the long way around, but it would be so much less tedious.

The easier fix is to probably to make 'up', 'down', and 'up/down' stairs. Why reinvent the wheel.

Or you can just have an up/down staircase that can be placed on top of each other and "auto-spirals". Not sure. This wouldn't be such a big issue except when trying to spiral, you now have to also build a floor so that the layers don't collapse when you build below.

I think the TL;DR here is we are continuing to have problems and this is probably one of those things that the bugs are still being ironed out. :(

[Sleipnir]

Hmmm, sorry to hear about this issue, folks. I'll take another swing at this based on your feedback. Thanks so much!

[Ryan Dorkoski]

Originally posted by Sleipnir:

Hmmm, sorry to hear about this issue, folks. I'll take another swing at this based on your feedback. Thanks so much!

If you can get it to work for you - I'm sure you can just explain the system. Might be fine, and I'm just being dense.

No rush either way.