Crowfall’s Eternal Kingdoms are player’s home away from the campaign battlefield. Here the valuable resources they hoard during each campaign can be stowed away safely and crafted into weapons, armor, and other items. These plots of land can have fortress, houses, guild halls, and even castles. It will be one of the more extensive MMO housing designs we’ve seen in awhile. Even though Eternal Kingdoms can be a personalized space for a single player, they can also be centers for larger groups of players. Having certain buildings can increase the player cap for each kingdom, where a renown monarch might be able to have his Eternal Kingdom become the center for trade or a mercantile empire. This guide will help new testers through the beginning steps of building their Eternal Kingdom, especially for those who aren’t familiar with testing games in pre-alpha stages of development where there are no tutorials.
Starting Up
When you start up the launcher, you’ll select Kingdoms then My Kingdoms. There will be only one, so select that one. Start it up using the Start Up Kingdom button. Once it’s done loading, hit the same button again. It will say Enter World now. You’ll arrive at the shrine where you’ll need to pick your avatar. Since this is your own private Eternal Kingdom, choose any avatar since it won’t really matter much.
Once you have a body chosen, you will want to open your Spirit Bank with B. This will also open up your character’s inventory. Since you’re here, we’ll assume you’ve purchased or have earned some buildings and parcels of land. Luckily for us, I have the parts to a small fortress, two buildings, and a few extra parcels. You’ll want to drag and drop each building or piece of buildings and the parcels into your character’s inventory. A small red X will appear in the top left corner of these items and you won’t be able to move them around. Don’t worry. There is a small delay on being able to interact with inventory items when they are transferred to or from the spirit bank.
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Important Tip Before Building
Before you start building, there are few important pointers you’ll need to know. There are two modes to your character: Combat mode and Harvest mode. (This will change once to action harvesting patch arrives. Instead there will be just different toolbars but, for now, modes). To exit Combat mode, which is the default mode your character, press Z to toggle to Harvest mode. This is important because you cannot build in Combat mode. Always remember to be in Harvest mode. The ability toolbar with shrink in size to indicate that you are no longer in Combat mode.
Expanding your Eternal Kingdom
First, we’ll want to expand our kingdom. We only have a character shrine and a tiny bit of land so we really want to add some parcels around it to build our fortress. With your land parcels in your character inventory, press ESC. From the menu, select Edit Kingdom. You will see a white grid with your shrine in the middle. From here, you can simply drag and drop the parcel of land wherever you choose, as long as it’s connected to another parcel of land. Controls for rotating the parcel are at the bottom right, and if you want to pick up a parcel, use the red bag button on the right of those. You can also name your kingdom in the top left, give it a description, and few other options we won’t worry about right now.
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Building Buildings
Now that you have all your building parts in your character inventory, you can start building! If you’re familiar with survival games like Ark: Survival Evolved, you’ll find this part fairly straightforward, maybe even easier. Unlike Ark, though, you don’t have to clear away harvestables where you want to build. I haven’t found any collision issues. Harvestables nodes simply disappear when you build on them.
Make sure your Spirit Bank is closed and open your character inventory. Right click on any building. This will bring you into a zoomed out mode outside of your character. From here, you can place that building wherever you want with handy key configuration on the right side of the screen which can help you manipulate the building in pretty much every way you need.
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When placing a building, it will appear one of three colors. Blue means you’re good to place it. Red means you can’t place it. Yellow means that piece will be connected to another building or piece. Connecting walls and the such is also really easy. Each building and wall has a green cube in multiple places indicating where another building or wall can be connected to. When you get two connection points close together, the game will automatically align those pieces so you don’t have to be perfect with your own alignment. When you inevitably have to pick up a building, return to your character. When you approach the building you erroneously placed, a prompt will appear for you to loot it with G. Press and hold G and the building will return to your character’s inventory.
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Conclusion
Building in Crowfall, currently, is fairly user friendly. Figuring out the nuances of the buttons is what takes the longest, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll have your fortress built relatively quickly. Not having to clear your land is great, and hopefully with this guide, you can have your Eternal Kingdom up and running without a hitch.
