Keys
To begin with, Chronicles of Elyria uses a system of keys and locked doors as a way to control access to buildings and rooms. Much like currency, keys are physical objects in your inventory. And, if you're carrying your keys around in your pocket and someone knows where you live, they can lift your keys in order to get into your room or residence. Note, that doesn't make it legal, it's just another means of entry that doesn't require picking a lock, shattering a window, or breaking down a door.
Stealing isn’t the only way to get access to keys however. The owner can also make copies and gift them to people for easy access. Again, having the key doesn't make entry legal, nor does granting someone access automatically give them a key. That's usually done as part of signing a Lease Agreement.
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Figure 3 – In-game screenshot of a staircase leading into a basement
Other Defense Mechanisms
While keys do a decent enough job of keeping people out of your residence in more civilized locations, in less populated areas or at night, those of a more deviant nature may still be inclined toward unlawful entry. To mitigate this, there's a number of other things that can be done to either protect your valuables, or to discourage entry outright.
Hidden Safes
As seen in the previous design journal (and in figure x), it's possible when architecting your home to create space for hidden safes and rooms. This won't stop those motivated (and perceptive) enough to spend time looking for them, but it will keep your things out of sight when you've got company over. As well, hiding things in other rooms, behind hidden doors, and inside locked objects adds more opportunities for the next type of deterrent!
Traps
Traps ranging from simple pit traps, to tripwires, to pressure plates, all the way to mechanical door traps can be used by homeowners to help them protect their valuables. Traps make entering a home illegally extremely dangerous because not only do you need to know where the traps are, or be fairly perceptive, but you also need to have the skills to disarm them! This limits those who can successfully rob you to those with an advanced skillset. In short, someone has to really want to enter your residence if they're going to go through that much trouble. If they do, only the last type of defense mechanism is likely to dissuade them.
Tamed Animals & Bodyguards
Having the skills necessary to successfully detect hidden doors, as well as recognize and disarm traps requires a specific type of character. However, that type of character has usually spent the majority of his/her time training up their deviant skills and may not (hopefully not) have spent much time in advancing their combat skills.
If that's the case, purchasing or taming an animal to guard your residence can go a long way toward discouraging unlawful entry. Nothing says "stay out" like a "Beware of Dire Wolf" sign. The more dangerous the animal, the more discouraging they're likely to be.
Of course, even animals can sometimes be soothed if you have the necessary knowledge and skills. Heck, it may even be possible to train an animal to attack their master. That's why, when worse comes to worse, nothing's quite as reliable as a trusted companion who can guard your house while they're offline. Barring that, a sell-sword may be willing to offer their services for some coin. But be aware, they usually ask for hazard pay.
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Figure 4 – In-game screenshot of an underground tunnel
Damage & Demolition
Up to this point we've primarily been talking about how to discourage people from entering your residence and what you can do to protect your valuables. But what if that's not the objective at all?
In Chronicles of Elyria, it's possible instead of entering a home, to simply destroy it. When designing this feature, we thought long and hard about how easy or difficult we wanted this to be. In the end, we decided that the time and resources required to build a house, guild hall, etc... should make the process of destroying them either equally expensive, or equally time-consuming.
As a result, we've designed housing so that aside from doors and windows, which can be destroyed easily enough (if you don't mind the noise), the process of destroying walls and structural supports generally requires some form of siege equipment. While it is possible to chop at a wall with a mundane item long enough to put a hole in the wall, doing so would take 10 minutes or more - plenty of time for someone to come and stop you.
We did this because we didn't want people running around towns whacking on buildings and leveling the whole thing in a matter of minutes. We felt like destruction of a civilized area should be a planned, organized event with plenty of advance-warning and enough resources gathered to do so.
So the most effective way to bring down a town is to build siege equipment at an off-site location and then move it into proximity of the town. Then, fire away!
Fire!
Speaking of fire, fire is a force to be reckoned with and unchecked, has the potential to destroy entire counties, let alone entire towns. As a result, we decided that while we did want fire to be a siege mechanic in Chronicles of Elyria, burning a house or forest down isn't something that can be done accidentally. You can't set a village ablaze solely by tossing a torch on a thatch roof. It requires siege equipment with some kind of flammable liquid and flaming projectiles.
But, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. One of the primary reasons for sieging another town or village, aside from invasion, is to loot the debris or pillage for salvaged resources. However, when you use fire, there's no resources to salvage, and no wreckage to be pillaged. When a building goes up in flames, everything above ground is destroyed. But below ground...
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Figure 5 – In-game screenshot of an underground vault
