Provinces: Rebuild a Ruined World, Together
After the Unraveling, the Aegic Valley lies scarred. Where towns once stood, only ruins remain — and councils of players are claiming them, clearing ground lot by lot, and raising settlements that the whole valley can see rise or fall. This is province-building in Icesus: live since 2026, still growing, and free.
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A province is a stretch of wilderness divided into a grid of terrain lots — forest, highland, wetland, frozen tundra. Every lot matters: buildings raised on their favoured terrain produce more, forested lots yield wood and rocky lots stone, and heavy harvesting genuinely transforms the land — clear-cut a forest and you get good building ground, but the stand takes weeks to grow back. Your council decides what rises where, and lives with it.
How It Works
- Claim. Find a province claim stone out in the wilds,
claimit, and name your settlement. You start with one thing: a Storehouse plan and a stretch of ruins. - Build with your hands. Clear a lot with a pick or axe, deliver wood, stone and clay, then swing a hammer through the construction stages. Every building starts as ruins and climbs four tiers: Restored → Improved → Advanced → Legendary.
- Govern together. The council — you plus up to five players — votes on the big decisions, runs the treasury, and grants citizenship to helpers. NPC settlers move into your housing, pay taxes, and eat from your granary.
- Flourish — or decay. Nothing is static: buildings wear down, granaries empty, mines collapse. Keep all three pillars at their peak at once and the province Flourishes — announced across the entire valley.
Eighteen Buildings, One Working Settlement
Every structure does real work and feeds the others — ore needs a smeltery, the smeltery needs coal, coal comes from the charcoal pit, and everyone needs dinner.
Foundation
- Storehouse — stockpile, plan shop, and the settlement's tier ladder
- Inn — hearth rest, meals, and a well-rested buff upstairs
- Housing — settlers move in, pay taxes, and need feeding
- Stables — carts and wagons for hauling ore and lumber
Food
- Farm — tilled rows to tend, herbs to pick
- Pasture — livestock to feed, water and muck out
- Fishery — a dock on the bank, nets to mend
- Smokehouse — preserve the catch before it spoils
- Food Hall — butcher, hearth cooking, and the long table
Industry
- Mine — dig deeper for richer ore, brace for cave-ins
- Smeltery — a multi-phase furnace ceremony turns ore to bars
- Sawmill — quality bonuses for timber and planks
- Quarry & Clay Pit — dressed stone and dug clay
- Charcoal Pit — burns cordwood down to furnace coal
- Workshop — tools, arms, sharpening and reinforcement
Wonders
- Shrine — consecrate it to fire, earth, water or air; daily blessings for every visitor when it burns bright
- Moon Portal — the most expensive build in the game: a consecrated moongate that carries travellers straight to one of the six moons
All 18 types are live today, from the in-game player guide (help provinces).
From Vein to Blade: The Artisan Economy
The buildings are the skeleton; the artisan crafts are the blood. Mining, smelting, smithing, refining, leatherwork and woodcraft form a real production chain where quality carries through every step — a rich vein becomes a pure ore, a pure ore becomes a fine bar, a fine bar becomes a blade worth naming. Nothing is clicked from a menu; every stage is worked by someone's hands.
Down the mine
Wield a pick and descend into tunnels your council actually dug. Deeper levels hold richer veins and worse odds — cave-ins, pockets of gas, flooding — so you brace the shafts with wooden supports and train your inner sense to feel a hazard before it strikes. The stakes are honest: a mine that runs dry, or dies in a deep collapse, is gone for good. At the surface you sort the rubble — ore one way, stone another, coal straight into the fuel pool — and haul it by cart to the smeltery.
The pour
Smelting is a multi-phase furnace ceremony, and its central rule is elegant: ore purity is the ceiling, skill is how much of it you keep. A beginner preserves roughly half of an ore's potential; a master smelter — knowledge of minerals, hard-won mastery of each individual metal, general smelting prowess — preserves nearly all of it. Work the bellows in rhythm during the smelt and you lift the quality further; miss the timing windows and the pour suffers. Superb ore through weak hands still makes a rough bar. That is the point.
| Smeltery tier | Best furnace | Metals unlocked | Quality cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restored | Smelting pot | Tin, lead, zinc, aluminium, copper, silver, gold | Good |
| Improved | Simple furnace | + iron, nickel | Superior |
| Advanced | Compact furnace | + platinum, titanium; alloys: bronze, brass, steel | Masterwork |
| Legendary | Dwarven furnace | + mithril, adamantium, iceron | Masterwork (full) |
The smeltery's tier caps every pour inside it — upgrading the building is how a settlement graduates from copper pots to dwarven-forged mithril.
Forge, sawpit, and bench
Bars go to the workshop forge, where smiths shape the settlement's tools and arms and higher tiers offer sharpening and reinforcement. Wood runs its own chain: the sawmill's saw pit and carpentry workstation boost the quality of planks and hewn timber, with premium species — oak, yew, maple, larch, elm — gaining the most. Leatherworkers cure what the hunters bring in. Every workbench can pull materials straight from your storehouse bin without leaving the room.
Becoming an artisan
The craft has its own guild ladder. Apprentice guilds — Apprentice Miners, Logger's Hall, Leathercrafters — level up from ordinary work: swing the pick, fell the trees, cure the hides. Any one of them opens Master Artisans, the coordination guild, whose rank in turn gates the three professional guilds: Professional Miners (deep mining, rare ores, geology), Professional Refiners (smelting mastery, alloy work), and Professional Smiths (smithing, gem work, metalcraft). A province with a real smith in residence is a province other players travel to.
Three Pillars, One Verdict
The pillars decay if neglected. Bring all three to their peak at once and the province Flourishes — a rare achievement the whole valley hears about. And geography matters: remote provinces (the game grades them Settled, Borderland, Distant, Frontier) are harder to reach but gather richer yields and cast stronger blessings.
An Economy You Can Feel
The granary passes through visible states — well-stocked, lean, hungry, empty — and a hungry settlement slows its workshops before an empty one stops the hearth entirely. Morale drifts with the menu: varied donations keep the cooks happy, monotony wears them down. The treasury pays monthly crew wages; run it dry and the crews walk off while your buildings crumble faster. None of this is a spreadsheet in a menu — you stand at the storehouse yard with a wagonload of timber, deposit it, and watch the settlement breathe.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are provinces in Icesus?
Stretches of ruined wilderness that player councils claim and rebuild into working settlements — a grid of terrain lots, 18 building types, real production chains, and a population to keep fed. Live since 2026 and in active development.
How do I claim one?
Find a province claim stone in the outworld and claim it to found your council. You get a Storehouse plan; clear ground with a pick or axe, build with a hammer, and buy further plans from the finished storehouse. In game, help provinces has the full guide.
How many players do you need?
A council is the founder plus up to five players, with citizenship for helpers beyond that. You can start alone, but the game itself is honest about it: past the first tier, a settlement is real work — recruiting is part of the game.
Can other players attack or destroy my province?
No — this is cooperative building, not a war game. The threats are the world's own: decay, hunger, flooded mineshafts, and an empty treasury.
Do I have to run a province to benefit from one?
No. Become a citizen, sell your catch to a food hall, rest at an inn, take a shrine blessing, or ride a moon portal. Provinces are woven into the world, not walled off from it.
How deep does the crafting actually go?
Deep. Ore purity sets the ceiling and your skills decide how much survives the smelt — knowledge of minerals, per-metal mastery earned by smelting that metal, and general smelting prowess, plus bellows-work timed by hand. Smeltery tiers unlock seventeen metals from tin to mithril, adamantium and iceron. And there is a full artisan guild ladder: apprentice guilds levelled by real work, Master Artisans above them, and Professional Miners, Refiners and Smiths at the top.
Does any of this cost real money?
No. Plans, materials, silver and wagons are all earned in play. Icesus has no store and no pay-to-win — it is run by a Finnish nonprofit and is free in full, starting in your browser.
Related
Somewhere in the valley there is a ruin with your council's name on it.
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