I added the shadow that Sue recommended on top of the stairs going down to the cellar, and I think it's great. Definitely conveys "descending."

I also added the shadow below the stairs going up, so you only see a shadow where it reaches the top -- an attempt to convey a shadow from the floor above. (In seeing this embiggened version, I may have to adjust that shadow slightly to be flush with the north wall.)

For the stairs descending to the cellar, I added a door at the top of the stairs and a half-wall (new WALL SHORT sheet with the Glow effects at half of what they are for the WALL sheet). The idea is that there is a closet below the stairs going up where the innkeeper stores brooms, mops, and cleaning supplies. Wouldn't want them to topple into the cellar if there was no sort of wall there.

This is beautiful.

I am in the process of designing an inn using the Mike Schley Dungeon style. I have a pair of stairs, one (the one that's farthest north) going up to the second story where the guest rooms are located, and the other descending down to the cellar.

I've always struggled with how to make stairs inside buildings look right.

1. Should both stairs be on the Symbols Flat sheet? Or are there special sheet effects that you would apply to stairs up and/or stairs down?
2. Am I correct in assuming that the straight edge is for the side you would enter on this level, and the ragged edge is where it disappears above (for stairs up) or below (for stairs down)?
3. It seems weird to have the stairs dead-end at the wall -- wouldn't it be better to leave room for a landing at the top of the stairs? But when I pulled them away from the wall, the space looks weird. Is there an effect you'd recommend for that space? Or what about walling it off like in the third image? Are there other effects you'd do for the bottom of the cellar stairs or the top of the stairs going up?

Any thoughts or insights are appreciated -- and if you have examples in your own galleries to point me to, I would love to check them out.

Yes, I do, although I just realized that I didn't finish installing them. Initially it looked like the plants and flowers were potted plants, but I just looked again and there are some that would be suitable. For now, I think I will keep my botanical garden as it is (unless I find a carnivorous plant), and keep these assets in mind when I do a full botanical garden.

Thank you, all!

I was worried that my temple wasn't looking as cohesive because I was drawing fills and symbols from so many places that didn't quite mesh. In particular, I wasn't happy with how the trees looked. (I also added a gazebo at the top and a botanical garden at the bottom.)

In the end, I decided to try the grass fills and trees from Forest Trail. Here they are without contour patches of other grass shades, at 50 and 100 scale.

And then I tried adding patches of grass of the same fill style, but with a shade higher and lower. I really don't have an eye for this sort of thing. Should I have bigger patches? More numerous small ones. Should they blend in more?

For the botanical garden, I couldn't find flowers among my symbols except for potted plants. It was supposed to be simple so as to not distract from the temple, but I got carried away.

• I made rose bushes by taking bushes from one style and then placing small varicolored bushes from another style on top as roses.
• I made flowers by using weeds from Forest Trail as the stems and then adding varicolored shrubs from another style as the flowers.
• I added a fungi garden using varicolored mushrooms of different sizes (plus a few varicolored fairy ring mushrooms from Forest Trail)
• I was going to use the anemones from Marine Dungeons as a plant, and then thought...why not use them as anemones? So I made a man-made pond for them, plus coral and a few other marine symbols.
• And I added a carnivorous plant. The only one I could find was from the Mike Schley Overland, which is in a very different style. If anyone has recommendations for other carnivorous plants, please let me know.
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