Like I mentioned yesterday, I returned to Wurm Unlimited’s Sklotopolis server and immediately started scouting to find the perfect spot. Any time I start a Wurm deed, I have a few requirements:

• Coastal access: I don’t like areas right on the water, but having a coastal area about 100 or so tiles from my deed was preferable. This is tough because coastal land is usually the first to go and it can be tricky to find. I really just want an on-deed spot to park my boat.
• Good ores: This one is tricky. I’ve learned lessons from past deeds, and at this point I take care to prospect to get an idea of what is available BEFORE deeding. Iron is a must. Gold, silver, copper, zinc, or lead is icing on the cake. Slate is extremely desirable but difficult to find. Anything else is nice to have, but not super-necessary. My husband is the miner, and he hates deeds with existing mines because he likes to design his mines a specific way.
• Terrain: I like places that back up to mountains or otherwise difficult-to-deed terrain (for a mine), but I also LOVE me some forest. Lots and lots of forest, with good trees (cedar, pine, birch). Also, not tooooooo hilly, I prefer flattish deeds as opposed to terraced, and the steeper the hills the longer the terraforming will take. In addition, it needs to be relatively high over water level, so that when the husband mines, he can build the mine ceilings high and put multi-story buildings underground. We have a city above and below ground!

I found a spot just off a highway in the southeast of the server. It appears to have once been started as a deed maybe, but the previous tenants didn’t get very far. All that was left was some pavement. The tent and horse are mine. 🙂

Let’s take a closer look! First, an overhead view so you can see this spot on the live map. The large green square is my new plot of land. The grey lines are highways, and if you look at the bottom left corner, all those splotched of grey indicate that there are peaks of stone peeping through because it’s a mountain. I prospected on those exposed stone tiles and found iron, slate, sandstone, zinc, copper and tin so far, so there is a good variety in the area. You can also see in the upper right that there is a coast at least somewhat close by. Works for me!

The view from the crossroads, looking southwest toward my land. Up the hill to the south we go!

After climbing a bit, we see the road cut to the right. This will be the “entrance” to my deed, and I plan on leveling it out a bit and adding some signage, bushes, etc to make it pretty.

We turn right and climb the hill some more…

Until we get to the center, which is roughly where my tent and horse are. This is ALL going to be terraformed and leveled for buildings and farm fields and such. Not a lot to look at for the moment, just a lot of pine trees.

However, if you go all the way to the northwest corner of the deed, you see a lovely view of a mountain covered in steppe. Lots of hunting in that direction! Currently the hillside is covered in roses, which is wonderful, but I’ll probably end up replacing half of them with grapevines and putting a little vineyard house on the top of the hill. Wine making is a thing in Wurm!