Large stele

A large stele is a purely decorative Miscellaneous structure. A stele provides less beauty than most sculptures and require more resources, but have no quality.

They are the smaller, less beautiful version of the grand stele.

Acquisition

Constructing a large stele requires Complex Furniture to be researched, 125 of any one type of stone and 8,000 ticks (2.22 mins) of work to construct.

Steles may also be found in ruins throughout the map.

Summary

Large steles add beauty to its surroundings. The beauty rating is added to the single, bottom-left-most tile a pawn can see. Despite their size, they do not count as a wall.

Large steles can also be used as an Artistic meditation focus, with a Meditation Focus Strength of +15% psyfocus/day. It appears that no other modifiers exist for steles as they do for other foci.^{[Fact Check Needed]}

You may need to build steles for a Momument quest, in which they act as a time and resource sink.

Analysis

Steles are less beautiful when compared to sculptures, even of the same material, with the only redeeming aspect being their higher HP and lack of quality.

For the same cost as a single large stele, you can construct 2.5 small sculptures. Small sculptures have 25 beauty at Poor quality, and even a pawn with Artistic Skill 0 will average 0.9 Poor quality or better sculptures with the same resource investment. At even modest Artistic levels, sculptures are more efficient in terms of time, stone blocks, and space.

Compared to grand steles, large steles take half the resource cost and half the work, for half the beauty and HP. Large steles are slightly more efficient for space, as a grand stele requires 9 tiles of space while 2 large steles of equal beauty require only 8.

While the examples that naturally spawn in ruins can be built around to benefit from their beauty, the beauty bonus is small enough for this to rarely be relevant. Instead, they are often better used by deconstructing them for their resources.

As a construction

Steles have some merit in training the construction skill. Have a pawn work on the stele, and right before it finishes, cancel the construction. You will get 75% of the resources back, and your pawn will have spent a lot of time constructing. In order to maximize building speed, slow your pawn as much as possible, such as by putting them in darkness.

Stats table

Large stele	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flammability	Market Value
Material	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flammability	Market Value
Granite blocks	15	048,140 ticks (13.37 mins)	340	0%	285
Limestone blocks	15	048,140 ticks (13.37 mins)	310	0%	285
Marble blocks	21	044,140 ticks (12.26 mins)	240	0%	270
Sandstone blocks	16	040,140 ticks (11.15 mins)	280	0%	255
Slate blocks	16	048,140 ticks (13.37 mins)	260	0%	285
Jade	47	040,000 ticks (11.11 mins)	100	0%	770