Guides:Digging - Simplified

Note to the newbie digger

Digging can be a complicated task to wrap your mind around. Reading the Wurm Wikipedia and tutorials only confused me. This guide is an attempt to assist new players understand what those numbers mean when you inspect the border of tiles and what happens when you dig. (Betcha didn't think digging was hard before Wurm eh?)

Sevenseeker

Digging Explained

Definitions

"Away from you" means that you are looking downhill.

"Towards you" means that you are looking uphill.

"Dirts" means piles of dirt, the size of 1 dig.

Single Tile Digging

This is 1 tile, divided into 4 sections. You will only see 1 tile, so you need to visualize that it has 4 squares inside of it. You are the "X" standing in the corner of square 4.

When you inspect the 4 borders, you will see, "Level", "Away" or "Towards" along with the number of "dirts".

Each border is telling you about the 2 squares that are touching it.

Square 4/3 is a right to left measurement. (4 is level to 3)

Square 3/1 is a bottom to top measurement since you are in the lower half of the tile. (3 is 2 dirts higher then 1)

Square 4/2 is a bottom to top measurement since you are in the lower half of the tile. (4 is 3 dirts higher then 2)

Square 2/1 is a right to left measurement since you are in the right half of the tile. (2 is 1 dirts lower then 1)

This is what the tile "looks" like.

Therefore you need to dump 2 dirts in square 1, and 3 dirts in square 2, for the tile to be level with square 4.

How digging affects multiple tiles

Congratulations, you've leveled a tile! Oh oh, now the previous tile, which was already level, has a slope! What happened?

For small changes in land height, it can be hard to notice if one tile is slightly higher then the next. The land is usually sloping over many tiles.

This image shows 3 tiles side by side. In example A, left to right, we have a tile that needs to be flattened, and two tiles that are already flat.

The arrows represent the dirt we are going to dig, and drop to flatten the tile.

In example B we see that although we have flattened the first tile, now the second tile has a slight raise! This is because you are dealing not only with individual tile flatness, but also terrain flatness. To remedy this, as the arrows show, you would have to lower the whole first tile by digging 1 dirt out of each square to match the other two tiles.

Terraces

Using what you've learned, you can now shape the land into terraces. Think of some oriental hillsides. Doing this on a mountain side is pretty extreme, and beyond the scope of this tutorial. Doing this on small gentle hills is useful so that you don't end up with a large flat spot, followed by a very steep hill! Example B above is what we are aiming for. We want a flat tile, followed by an angled tile, followed again by a flat tile. This will allow the land to follow a hill, while maintaining useful land!