Exploration

Exploration is one of the primary activities in Solace Crafting and there are a few tools to help you do it. Exploration is unlimited because the world has no discernible maximum size, and because in Single Player (SP) mode any character can visit any of many worlds you may choose to create, using any configuration that may take your fancy.

### Tools

There are a few tools that can help explore worlds.

Pressing 'F4' brings up a small overlay in the bottom left corner to display your current x/z coordinates. this is especially useful if you find things you want to note down (such as locations of Lemon and orange trees, your coordinates just before you die, or where you are when in Multiplayer games.

The in-game map shows a lot of info.

One of the types of Town Facility Masonry allows you to craft are *Resource Scanners* which show locations of Uncommon or greater basic resources on your map (Upgrades required for range and type and range is Capped at 20km).

It may not seem obvious, but characters can climb almost any non vertical surface, and currently take no fall damage.

Swimming and Boats are a thing. \*Boats currently only work in SP)

If you ever get stuck and can not jump or build your way out you can activate your Recall skill (by default it is '0' on your first hotbar.

### Reasons to Explore

* Obtain higher Tier resources
* Locate special Town Encounter resources
* Clear Large Encounters such as Towers, Dungeons, Caves and Floating Islands for Experience and Loot.
* Small encounters for minor loot.
* Set up Towns and outposts to expand the Solace network and auto farm materials
* Eye-candy (the world is purrdy)

#### Tiered Resources

Solace Crafting is based on the idea that the farther you go from your T0 starting Solace, the higher the tier of resources you can find and the harder encounters with Animals guardians and Bosses are.

The default world settings increase Tier of difficulty every 5 kilometers (km) in doughnut shape, so it doesn't matter which direction you travel from T0. this distance and difficulty scaling can be altered in world settings.

File:Tierimage.png

#### Town Encounters

Town Encounters are a special group of locations in the world that allow you to harvest special materials from them when an Outpost or town is built near them (Usually just a solace, storehouse and harvesters). Each Town Encounter requires a specific harvester NPC in order to harvest the special resource, and the resource must be located within the power radius of the solace, which often means upgrading the solace' Power at least once.

#### Large Encounters

Special locations players may wish to seek out include:

* Towers which require you to fight your way through Guardian elementals to reach a Fire elemental boss and a loot chest.
* Dungeons which are randomly generated piles of interconnected rooms and balconies mostly containing Guardians with often 1 fire elemental boss on each 'floor'.
* Caves are underground randomized maze-like structures rich in Stone, Metal and Gemstone nodes, guarded by Stone Golems. Lava layers and the caves underneath require special clothing to survive.
* floating Islands can be reached by ground based Teleporters. Currently they are not populated with creatures, but special clothing is required to visit them if you wish to survive. Bridging from the main island to its satellite islands gains access to a rare resource Aethryte which currently has no use.

#### Towns and Outposts

Towns can be built at almost any location as long as their requirements are met, and can consist of rebuilt or player built or pre-saved buildings. Development is underway to enable Steam Workshop support for players to share their builds.