Build The Lone Fortress

Heyo wassup, it's me, it's ya' boi, Asmongold Tyralion.
This is something I've been working on for almost a year now, although all the 'build' progress has been made in only last 2 months. I don't even know why I took that big of a break.
Anyways, it's finished, and I don't see any reason not to post it.
There it all goes:

Spoiler: Pics with a Little Bit of Background

A citadel. A military outpost. A port. This island was everything to the Crown, worth all the resources and manpower required to maintain it.

A sea-blue jewel in the royal crown, the island was its pride. Not everything, however, was all sunshine and rainbows...

Soldiers started dying. For reasons still unknown, life withered away from them. They quickly resorted to burying their comrades in catacombs.

Guided by a stange voice, they may have dug too far...

Only a small percentage of the soldiers escaped, those who still were sane, at the very least. After much debate, the fort was forever locked away.

The islands quickly became beloved by sailors and merchants alike. Its seclusion and size brought forth a good trading outpost for pirates, traders...

...and other shady personas.

Quickly enough, the island's infrastructure grew atop of the ashes of the former outpost.

However, nobody ever dared cross the bridge. Some merchants say that, at night, you could hear almost entire armies chanting some sort of war cry...

And their words may spell truth.

As Darkness and Light once again start to clash against each other, other powers also started assembling their forces...
Powers that will soon decide the world's fate.

In case you want to see the progress, here you go:

Spoiler: A Real Lotta Pics

Download this here, if you really want.

That's it I guess.

 

i love all of it but the first abandoned place should really have more colours than just gray even if abandoned imo

 

The castle really does blend into the cliff-face a bit too much. I'd recommend adding slight highlings of diminishing dirt and coarse dirt to make the distinction between grass and cliff less sudden. That'll make the transition feel a bit better and make the castle stand out more.

 

Give that pond an incoming water source my man.

 

Though I love the build, there are a few things I think need changing/adding:

The castle needs more detail imo, just slabs on the outer side of a straightup cobblestone wall makes it look kinda bad. I would recommend adding some patches of mossy cobble and mossy stone bricks, but don't do //replace. Add it manually, so that it's bunched together. Then, I would suggest //replaceing the stonebrick to 98,98,cobble, cracked stone brick(cant remember id). I love the dock, but the ships seem to have an awkward frame.

Then, I would suggest making the castle overall overgrown, with leaves and shrubbery falling down its sides. Don't just use 31:1 on the grass, as it is too plain, I would recommend adding some 175:2 as well as both ferns and big ferns. On the sides of the islands, where the cliffs are, you NEED vines (not vines, leaves) dangling over the edges. It adds some well-needed detail.

There are probably a few other things that could be improved, but great job nonetheless :)


Also, a wynnpack tip: Use the id 106:0 to add marshes/weeds to the water, they look better than sugarcane and fit well into overgrown areas :-)

 

Fuck, I just realized how right you are. Initially I wasn't planning on, well, 'abandoning' the fort, more like having it work and on high patrol. I kinda forgot about the abandoned part when I started working on the second island and it was too late (meaning: now).

Still, thanks for constructive criticism!

 

Looks kinda like a combination of Skiens Island and Twain Mansion's graveyard. Still pretty cool though.