Sites and Dungeons
This page owns first-class place content inside the broader Location model.
Site Rule
A Site is a specific place inside a Location that the player can inspect, enter, exploit, defend, connect, or build around.
Site Families
Grounded site families include:
- shrines, ward sites, and Nexus-linked anchors (See lore exposure: lh-game1-world-hooks.md — Calling Shrines row, Nexus manifestation row)
- ruins, strongholds, and other interior-bearing remains
- mines, quarries, water sites, and other productive sites
- active or sealed threat sites when the danger itself occupies a place
- dungeons
Discovery Path
The Site state axis (committed LocationContentState enum) and its
relationship to the Feature discovery axis and Location knowledge axis
are documented in
./state-axes-and-thresholds.md
under "Site State Axis".
- Clues, leads, and threat signs can point toward a Site without creating a Site entry yet.
- A Feature can hold partial knowledge of a ruin, resource node, or dungeon approach while the place is still uncertain.
- Once content becomes discovered, enterable, exploitable, or developed, it should appear as a Site in the Location Dossier.
- If the player later secures, owns, or develops it, it remains a Site with clearer state wording rather than flipping back into Feature language.
Dungeon Rule
Dungeons are one site family once discovered or enterable.
- Before that point, a dungeon can appear only as a clue, a Feature, or a threat sign inside a Location.
- Once discovered or entered, it is treated as a Site with its own inspectable state.
- An active dungeon can be either a Threat Site or a Site with linked threats.
- Combat, traversal, loot, and threat handling can specialize by dungeon type without creating a second place ontology.
Design Rules
- Discovery must preserve uncertainty until the player earns better knowledge.
- Site rewards and threats must come from the site's nature.
- Unknown or nonexistent dungeons must not appear as fully known site rows.
- The Location Dossier remains the site-first inspection surface.
- The combat/dungeon screen is the dedicated active-combat or raid surface opened from site context, not a top-level dungeon tab.