What I'd like to see over the year:
Bendir - It has by far the least functional barracks of the settlements. The tunnels are fine, neat, useful, flavorable. But when every other barracks has a portal to make use of, and quarters people will actually want, it feels bad. Bendir has room for expansion, to help fix the very limited housing and shops, too. It's open air nature is it's defining feature, I wouldnt want to see that change, it just needs a little bit of love. And for gods sake, put a ship for Bendir in Brog's port, like Myon has in Guldorand's. Bendir is the only settlement without a ship of it's own, it's lame. Greyhammer needs to expand, as well. Lovely setting, unused because there's generally never a reason to be there, nothing to do, and is bypassed often leaving it one of the least trafficked "towns".
Grotto: This is by far the worst designed area in the game. Period. The housing all being open in the same area is the worst idea ever. Most players cannot even access it, to even go to the shops inside it. Moving the Grotto to the Turret, so the gnomes have their own settlement to play with is overdue. The Grotto's depressing, lackluster appearance and design is not fun for anyone who tries to get involved with bringing life to it. I would build a better Grotto under the Turret, and then link the two - either by a railcar transition warp, or portals. Leave the existing Grotto under Brog - just expand it to the Dale under the Turret. If the Gnomes are fated to be the one race of the Earthkin Alliance without their own nation like the Dwarfs and Halflings, double down on it. Give them a Grotto foothold in both nations, linked together. As it stands, it's less Grotto and more Ghetto - it feels like an afterthought to stuff gnomes in, not a place of their own. The Turret, as is, is not enough to support the gnome player population and we're fed up with the Grotto not being under our full control or a place conductive for our RP. The area around the Turret could be used to create a forest gnome village - and it's expansion with suitable services would fix the issue of the shops going ignored, and the Grotto shops not being accessible by a majority of the playerbase.
Westcliff: Having the Amn vessel in the Guldorand port be able to take you TO Westcliff and not just AWAY from it, its a simple request. Westcliff needs more traffic. It doesnt deserve to die out and be forgotten. The town means alot to us due to the history, the setting, and being able to get to it easier would mean alot to us who love Westcliff.
Ships - I believe the Cogs really need a secondary storage, it's hard to make use of the ship as a quarter (which you have to) and function as a ship with the materials needed. There also needs to be more ships, the amount of demand for sailing, having two or three more rentals (and Bendir having their own) would help. There's not much more lame than getting a group together to go do sailing content and finding all the rentals are in use or sunk.
Castles/Settlement Bid Properties - A new castle on the east coast (guldorand side), that would give Guldorand an actual reason to bid on any of them, would be nice (I'd do a lighthouse fort with a dock on the coastline, myself). More functionality for the castles, so they actually sought after, is needed. Darrowdeep, as neat as it is as a concept, stays empty and unused, same as Gloom. If these were tried to settlement mechanics, provided some sort of mechanical aid to the settlements, they might not go so unused. Shyr farm providing food for it's owner city warehouse, for example, or Darrowdeep/Gloom generating npc patrols, it doesnt have to be over the top. It just needs to provide more function, to warrant the effort and cost, than they give. Being a neat faction base isnt enough - people dont stick to them or make use of them beyond the initial "Hey this is neat" phase of owning it, and then they become empty ghost structures again. Them becoming valued to the point of driving a pvp narrative, and thus, having castle sieges and fights could do that, too. We have siege weapons, give them a reason to be brought out.
The various farms around Arelith - I'd like to see those provide more meaningful interaction with the settlements. Farm maintenance, shipments of goods, commoner writs. All content they could provide other than just a place to plant a few herbs. Stardew Valley Arelith Edition - let them have function and a content source for commoners.
Housing - There's buildings all over Arelith that would make for interesting homes. The non-interactive towers you see here and there, some house buildings like the water wheel house outside of Wharftown. The home in Brogswood recently is a great example. The old ranger camp in Arelith Forest becoming an actual quarter, for example. Quarters on Ranyes Island.
Interactive Settlement things - The recent belltower viewing ports in Brog, the gong in Bendir, the scry towers of Cordor. These are all great examples, and give life and function to the cities. The port cannons, they all need to be come functional again, and ports like Guldorand and Cordor without them, could use them. Wheel those bombards facing buildings at the Beggar's gate to the port where they can be useful!
Settlement Fixtures and Limits- Guldorand being limited to 30 is just choking for the things we want to do. Yes, we understand you have a vision and purpose for it being so low. It still is lame, and keeps us, the players who live there, from making it lived in. There's alot of things that could be hard mapped to free up fixture slots, like the fire/bench area. Things that are a quality of life for the cities like that should be evaluated and mapped to the module, because it shows what the players want the city to be. It's a hub, it should have enough seating built in for the demand, without us having to provide it with the limited fixtures we have to work with. Likewise, with all the shared housing fixture limits, alot of us find ourselves unable to decorate the large empty houses we get and still fairly share that ability with our neighbors. And for some areas, like the Earthkin keep and Village, there's barely any fixture room despite huge empty rooms and wide open empty fields. Players should have more direct input on the look of the settlements they inhabit, and we do that via fixtures. When they are this limited, we cannot express ourselves properly in our own homes, and it sucks. A modest increase in fixture limits and the hardmapping of things that have been there for years is a step forward for that.
