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syncaidius

Blossom Canal Project

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This ancient, beautiful relic has been lying in ruins under Pristine for what seems like an eternity, long before I arrived on Pristine. A couple of years ago myself and Blarster started fixing this canal up after finding it in ruins, but real-life got in the way and the project died off again. I also should have made this post long, long ago. The original tunnelers clearly put a lot of work into it, so It seems a shame to let such a useful canal be forgotten and lost to decay.

 

Current Status: Open - Not fully reinforced. Knarrs, sailing and rowing boats only.

  • Roughly two-thirds of canal walls are reinforced
  • Lots of veins to be mined out of the way (see below)
  • Canal ceiling needs raising
  • Canal floor needs lowering for larger boats
  • Walkway started from south side. Incomplete
  • One or two surface access tunnels to be fitted along the canal, connecting to its walkway
  • Midway between Oasis Motel and Pierpoint is messy old collapses and reinforcements which need fixing
  • Northern entrance is now nice and shiny

 

Map
vpMYOxm.png

(Enlarged version here)

 

Obstructing Veins

All veins are listed from north to south. Anyone is welcome to come and chip away at them and you can do whatever you like with the ores you've mined. The only exception is deeded veins, unless the deed owner has given permission to mine/take them, for obvious reasons.

 

Note: I've been gone a few weeks, so the the list below is outdated. In the meantime check out Anarres vein list. Will update the OP soon.

 

Spoiler

 

Waterway veins:

  • Iron - 83QL
  • Iron - 40QL
  • Sandstone - 62QL
  • Marble - 30QL
  • Copper - Utmost
  • Copper - 35QL
  • Copper - Very good
  • Marble - 27QL
  • Marble - 28QL
  • Gold - 49QL
  • Sandstone - 94QL
  • Marble - 21QL
  • Marble - 55QL
  • Gold - 28QL
  • Zinc - 24QL
  • Gold - 39QL
  • Marble - 57QL
  • Marble - Very good
  • Lead - 91QL
  • Lead - 95QL
  • Lead - 40QL
  • Lead - 36QL
  • Lead - 91QL - deeded: Oasis Motel and Market
  • Silver - 28QL

 

Walkway veins:

  • Copper - 28QL
  • Copper - 36QL
  • Iron - 47QL
  • Sandstone - Good
  • Sandstone - 34QL
  • Sandstone - Very good
  • Copper - 64QL
  • Sandstone - 67QL
  • Copper - 70QL
  • Copper - Very good
  • Copper - Very good
  • Sandstone - Utmost
  • Copper - 62QL
  • Marble - 22QL
  • Marble - 48QL
  • Marble - Very good
  • Marble - 21QL
  • Sandstone - Very good
  • Marble - 22QL
  • Marble - Utmost
  • Gold - Very good
  • Gold - 66QL
  • Sandstone - Good
  • Marble - 42QL
  • Marble - 55QL
  • Marble - 23QL
  • Marble - 72QL
  • Marble - 74QL
  • Gold - Very good
  • Gold - 71QL
  • Gold - Good
  • Sandstone - 63QL
  • Marble - Very good
  • Gold - 64QL
  • Lead - 54QL
  • Iron - Very good
  • Sandstone - 29QL
  • Sandstone - 82QL
  • Sandstone - 66QL
  • Iron - 71QL
  • Iron - 96QL
  • Sandstone - 81QL
  • Silver - 92QL
  • Silver - Very good
  • Silver - 46QL - deeded: Walnut Cove

 

 

Thank You!

A special thank you to all those who have helped so far:

  • @Anarres- busting veins
  • @Ayesfor shedding light on the canal's history
  •  Blarster - Support beams, terraforming, tunneling, concrete, busting veins, crates, bsbs

  • @Explora- busting veins. Canal history
  • @Fotb- busting veins
  • @JDBooker- Deed permissions, founder of the original project, original planning, mining and construction
  • @Jospicy - busting veins
  • @Jugurtha - Tunneling, concrete. Also gave me a kick in the butt to get the project restarted
  • @LionIX- busting veins
  • @Muse- busting veins, strongwall casts
  • @Ohana- Terraforming, tunneling, busting veins and strongwall casts
  • @QueenRocks-  busting veins
  • @Tilda- busting veins, concrete, crates, bsbs, original tunnel work, strongwall casts , canal history and lots of other supplies!
  • @Tuga - tunneling, busting veins
  • @WurmholeTunneling, deed permissions and providing an alternative route if needed!

 

Please let me know if I have missed anyone out, including those who worked on the original tunnel. If you've mined any of the veins (even a bit) feel free to post or PM me, you're doing us all a huge favour by aiding their removal!

 

Lastly, If anyone would like to help with getting the canal finished, please drop a post here or PM me ingame (Syncaidius), or via discord (Syncaidius#0785). Any assistance is greatly appreciated!

Edited by syncaidius
Veins, always the veins!
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I believe this was started by Jdbooker it went under several of his deeds on the way and had surface access at Dragons Keep. I sailed through it once in a gale in my knarr when it was one tile wide with collapses along the way. Not a fun experience and then tiles started collapsing on deed and could not be reopened so it became unusable.

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Ah, that's good to know. Thank you for the insight Explora. Hopefully the experience will be better next time!

Edited by syncaidius

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Still not fully awake at the moment so can't remember some names lol (need more coffee!), but I remember working on the canal lots of years ago, cleaning out veins etc, when the project was run by  Perecles of Black Biad deed near Blossom. I believed that was when it started and there was a group of folks working on it. Some kind of difficulty arose with one or more deed owners above at the time and finishing up work didn't carry on for some time after that, but it was fully passable and very useful. I've long wished it would get reopened, but whenever I asked around I couldn't find much interest or someone always said they were planning to/working on it again already but then it always gets dropped or delayed again. Our alliance mate Darq has a deed up there by Blossom now called Landslide (between Clay Harbor and Black Biad) , and it was intended as a new opening into that canal, I think there are even signs or the house is named for the canal or something. (Sorry for the foggy memory,, logged in to check names and did an edit). He is away or on another server now so that project is stalled for a long time now. Talk to Serra though, she had mentioned getting his ok to maybe work on it at some point, if there are currently two openings on that side no sense in working on both.

 

If you are working on it again I will be happy to help with it, just won't be this month as I am very busy with my priests and must finish out their current prem time before I spend time on anything else :D I do seriously hope it works out this time, for awhile I seriously thought of deeding your old deed area myself for that purpose but someone else did instead for awhile and I moved on. Good that you are back in place now  :)

 

Edited by Tilda
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@TildaI had no idea you and Perecles had worked on the canal. A lot of it has survived, it's just riddled with collapses. There's also a few underground docks and some long-forgotten boats down there. I'm a bit concerned about deed permissions halting the project again too, but hopefully something can be worked out if it becomes an issue. Also, if there are two entrances at Blossom, I'm open to whichever one people prefer. I'll head over there and take a look later!

 

1 hour ago, Tilda said:

If you are working on it again I will be happy to help with it, just won't be this month as I am very busy with my priests and must finish out their current prem time before I spend time on anything else :D I do seriously hope it works out this time, for awhile I seriously thought of deeding your old deed area myself for that purpose but someone else did instead for awhile and I moved on. Good that you are back in place now  :)

 

 

There's no rush. I'm sure there is enough work down there for at least another two months. :)

 

Thank you for all the helpful information!

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On 3/10/2019 at 8:10 PM, syncaidius said:

Blossom entrance is above water, so this would need fixing

That current entrance was never the one that was connected out into the bay. The original one was a bit further south at about 828,729. The problem it created at the time was that whoever made it had dug down the small zig-zag road along the shore that ran from the bottom of that highway going down the hill and into Blossom, thus ruining that path into Blossom. So when they abandoned the project and that opening collapsed I filled back in the pitted area and reconnected that path along the water once again. I think I reinforced those tiles around it too so that they would not mess up the little pathway again or someone else might. This was all done before bridges were in the game so I was satisfied with filling in the area in a sightfully graded way, replanting the area with shrubs and restoring the paved pathway.

 

The current entrance was also one I made before that boat tunnel project was even started and made as a public access for others to go inside there to mine the various iron veins. Later this mine canal creator mined down a lot of the surrounding floor into the water so that it was very difficult to access again with carts to mine the remaining iron veins. I will leave it to you (and others) to decide who was better served by these cave canal revisions. Perhaps this time you can improve the mine access for everyone's use and not just a few boaters who may rarely use it.

 

=Ayes=

 

Added: I have a lot of memories of the evolution of the whole area around Blossom as I made a character on Pristine the second day it opened and then a deed right above Blossom against its perimeter a few days later. I kept that guy as mayor there for about 3 years and played him quite often to see many new/old players come and go, as well as many deeds going up and down. Eventually after WU came out I decided to cut back on some deeds/characters, so I disbanded that one and demolished all the buildings so someone else could use the spot. I was surprised to see it remained unsettled for some time since it had a guard tower and nice mine on the land. Later I bought a rowboat and took that guy to Deliverance to live with my other alts since he had some decent skills to make an alt mayor there too. I still have one alt guy left on Pristine so I will have to log him on to take a look around the area again as I haven't been there for about a year now.

Edited by Ayes
Memories.....
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Thank you to everyone who has provided information about the canal's history. One reason I asked was so that I could gain a better understanding what went wrong on previous attempts, then hopefully avoid making the same mistakes this time around. :)

 

I've updated the canal map with all of the deeds I could find along the route in order to gain a better view of where the canal could (or not) be routed. It also shows the sailable part(s) of the canal. Please let me know if I've missed any nearby!

 

For now, the canal is likely to stay in it's current state until a suitable entrance location can be decided on (hopefully!) near Blossom. There are a lot of deeds in the area that I need to get in touch with, as I dislike working in or near settlement perimeters without permission. In the meantime, I'll be reinforcing whatever I can in the sailable part of the canal to prevent it reverting back into swiss cheese!

 

On 3/11/2019 at 7:17 PM, Ayes said:

That current entrance was never the one that was connected out into the bay. The original one was a bit further south at about 828,729. The problem it created at the time was that whoever made it had dug down the small zig-zag road along the shore that ran from the bottom of that highway going down the hill and into Blossom, thus ruining that path into Blossom. So when they abandoned the project and that opening collapsed I filled back in the pitted area and reconnected that path along the water once again. I think I reinforced those tiles around it too so that they would not mess up the little pathway again or someone else might. This was all done before bridges were in the game so I was satisfied with filling in the area in a sightfully graded way, replanting the area with shrubs and restoring the paved pathway.

 

The current entrance was also one I made before that boat tunnel project was even started and made as a public access for others to go inside there to mine the various iron veins.

 

That would explain why the current entrance does not align with the collapsed canal tunnel. Thank you for pointing that out. Of course, if the canal cannot fit in that area without messing up accessibility around Blossom, then it's a no-go, but it's too early to tell at the moment. One issue is that the proposed entrance is within Blossom's perimeter. @Tildamentioned previous work on an alternative entrance near Blossom, so that's also a possibility!

 

On 3/11/2019 at 7:17 PM, Ayes said:

Later this mine canal creator mined down a lot of the surrounding floor into the water so that it was very difficult to access again with carts to mine the remaining iron veins. I will leave it to you (and others) to decide who was better served by these cave canal revisions. Perhaps this time you can improve the mine access for everyone's use and not just a few boaters who may rarely use it.

 

If for no other reason, I think this would be a good one to include a walkway along the inside of the canal. There is almost every ore type (except tin and slate) in and along the canal walls, which would likely be a huge benefit to neighbours and newbies alike.

Edited by syncaidius
Typos and things.
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Ayes, I remember Zip of course, one of my newbie saviors back in the day :) 

Syn good map! Looking at where the Landslide canal entrance is, right after Clay Harbour and before Eagles Landing, the new one I mentioned not on your map, I suspect he might have thought to go towards connecting with the old tunnel by heading to the left from there and up towards his Castle Krag and Bloomtown deeds, that may even be why he put them in that area idk. Does seem like a good next step to talk to him if he is around or Serra who would know how to reach him :) I will shut my face for now, good luck and will pop in to see if I can help in the next few weeks!

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I own Bloomtown, Castle Krag and Landslide (on the south border of Eagles).  The path you have outlined is fine by me, but if it gets too difficult, I can try to make access by cutting West from the bottom of Bloomtown and opening up right in Landslide.  However, if any go through my deeds, I'd limit the depth to 5 tiles below water surface.  Good for knarrs and horses both, but not for deep ships.  The N edge of Bloomtown perim used to bump into Blossum S perim, but I recently pulled it back a bit, so there is a lot of free space to navigate between.  If there is a reinforcement in that free space that you need removed, please contact me directly and I can shift my deed back N a bit to help remove it. 

 

Anything you need, regarding my 3 deeds there, just let me know and I'm sure we can work something out.  I am not in forums much lately (back to more RL fun), but I get emailed when  someone PMs me in forums and will respond.

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@WurmholeThat's great to hear. If it does come to cutting west to landslide, the 5-depth limit would not be a problem, as making it deeper is really just a nice-to-have. The main priority is to make the canal sailable and ensure it cannot collapse again, as it has in the past. If anything comes up around your deeds, you'll be first to know. Thanks for the heads up!

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On 3/14/2019 at 11:33 PM, Wurmhole said:

I own Bloomtown

Ah ha! I logged an alt a few days ago that I had left on Pristine to see what was going on and noticed Bloomtown since some years ago I had also squeezed a deed in there of about the same size. I also named it Bloom(something or the other, forget now) since it seemed to fit nicely with Blossom next to it. So you have inherited all my terraforming work there. The rest of it could stand a bit more development though. Anyway, nice to see the place is in good hands for the future.

 

=Ayes=

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Derailing.

 

Pristines Guard towers miss the maintenance ?

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Bump. Added Landslide to the map for reference and fixed the insanely mis-sized Eagle's Landing. 

 

Also added to the OP, a list of veins blocking the waterway. Anyone is welcome to come and chip away at them and you can do whatever you like with the ores/shards you've mined. The only exception is deeded veins, unless the deed owner has given permission to mine/take them, for obvious reasons.

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Will come round later tonight or tomorrow to start being of some assistance hopefully. Thanks for your kind words, but to be fair I did very little of the original work compared to all the others involved, but it's been so long ago now that I can't remember all the names :(  Beyond Perecles I do remember Liquidangel did a lot of mining, clearing out  gold in particular, but there were several others involved too and maybe some of them are still around and might notice this thread and say hi :)

 

PS history wise judging from my own playtime this would have been done around late 2013.

Edited by Tilda
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Bump. The canal is now sailable from the south side, all the way to near blossom, but there's no boat entrance up there yet. We're close!

 

Soon, we're also going to start mining out the walkway a bit earlier than intended because it turns out,  planting bsbs/smelters and transporting resources is pretty hard when you're permanently knee-deep in water. :P

 

Also, thank you@Fotb,@LionIXand@Tildafor chipping away at the veins.

Edited by syncaidius
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Bumpty bump.The northern entrance is now open, so the canal should be sailable for knarrs, sailing and rowing boats, from both ends.

 

We have also redone the southern entrance at Walnut cove and are still working on the northern entrance near Blossom. 

 

For now we've dug out a temporary walkway, which is passable on foot and with the usual land vehicles. In time, we're aiming to put a bridge over it, but there is still a lot of work to do inside the canal itself. Inside of the northern entrance currently resembles swiss cheese, as we've hit a lot of old collapsed tiles in that area.

 

If you want to try out the canal, bring a pickaxe. There are sections that are not reinforced yet, so there is a good chance you'll run into collapses.

 

Both entrances still have much work to be done, but here is a pic of each one so far:

 

XxS2ENy.png

Northern entrance at i15 (near Blossom).

 

YY0FCnh.png

Southern entrance at m15 (Walnut Cove).

Edited by syncaidius
Typos, words.
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20 hours ago, syncaidius said:

Northern entrance at i15 (near Blossom).

This entrance is done very well now and can still travel along the lake. The way it should have been long ago originally :)

 

=Ayes=

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The walkway has now been started from the south side, but we've hit a "very good" silver vein with 5k - 10k actions on it. 

 

A couple more veins have also popped this week. Thanks to@Tilda,@Exploraand@Anarresfor chipping away at more of the veins, and thank you@Jugurthafor the mining assistance at the northern end of the canal. All of the help is greatly appreciated!

 

On a side note, the inside of the northern entrance is a mess right now. It needs a lot of love in the form of strongwall casts, as well as a few disintegrate casts to remove some older reinforcements. The southern side also needs a few strongwall casts to close the old entrance. If anyone is able to help with this, please get in touch here or via PM. :)

 

 

Edited by syncaidius
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Bump bump. Many more veins have died this week with the help of@Anarres,@Tuga, Jospicy and@Tilda.

 

Since there was room for a 2-wide walkway, we've widened the southern entrance in preparation. It also means it can be hooked up to the highway system once finished. The northern walkway entrance will not be widened for the time being, as the inside of it is a watery mess.

 

WvKcJeh.png

 

Thanks again to all those who have helped out. Bit by bit the canal is progressing! :)

 

Edited by syncaidius
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Bump. I've been slacking off with the canal the past couple weeks to catch up with our own deed. But now i'm back to mining out the walkway. ?

 

Meanwhile,@Jugurtha has been busy chipping away at the ceiling to make it all nice and smooth:

OggRtnV.png

 

@Ohanahas also done some insanely fast and awesome work to fix the northern entrance, so that the walkway entrance can now be two-tiles wide:

ag3TalZ.png

 

@Tildahas also donated a set of marble braziers for the canal, with the first two going into position a couple of days ago:

8brRjqp.png

 

Thanks again to everyone involved!

Edited by syncaidius
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@syncaidius

Yes indeed the canal was my idea and about 4 or 5 years ago i spent a lot of time and silvers getting it passable right through.

I gave up on it however when someone who shall remain nameless deliberately sealed up the Blossom end.

A few months ago i split my Dragons Keep deed into two deeds so that the canal under the road was off deed.
Oasis is still across the canal, and i have no problem giving anybody mining access through it. just send me a list of names.

I hardly ever check the forums any more. and have just been informed of the renovation project.

Should you need me to help, or give access, the best way to contact me is through Discord. JDBooker#4050

Edited by JDBooker
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that's awesome JD thank you :) thanks for the additional info on the history as well, good to know whose project it was originally :)

 

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Some more background to the Canal.
The original mining started from my Oasis deed around October/November/December 2013, i forget exactly.

I originally mined north to link up with Dragons Keep. along the perimeter between Ghoulio's deed to the west (i forget the name of his deed) and Huntsman's Lodge to the east.

Directly south of Oasis was my friend BTRod's deed called Bitburg, or something similar, again, memory fails me.

While I mined north of Dragons Keep, he mined a little way south to help the project. When he left for the new world of Xanadu in June 2014, i completed the south direction.

It was not long after the breakthrough of a single width canal from Dragons Keep to Blossom that the end was sealed and the project was put on hold. This was probably around August 2014.

As i had done about 99% of the mining alone (ok, with an alt army helping) I got quite annoyed with the person blocking my work, so i threw my toy pickaxe out the pram, and never swung another blow in the canal since.

But now there seems to be a decent number of people helping, i have no problem with working on it again.

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