Age of Heroes - Chapter 1 Q&A

Greetings Exiles!

During the announcement stream of Age of Heroes Chapter 1 we gathered several questions from the chat and today we bring answers!

General

What’s the release date for the New Age?

The launch on all platforms is planned for October.

Will the headhunters stay in the next age?

Headhunting will be disabled when Age of Heroes Chapter 1 launches. The event will return at a later date and we will communicate it in advance via official channels.

What’s the goal for Public beta testing?

Public beta testing helps us identify critical issues that can only be revealed in a live environment and adjust the player experience to align with the expected gameplay loop. In addition, feedback from players and content creators is vital in preparing for potential hotfixes and post-launch updates, shortening the time before they can hit live servers. It is also great to get additional bug reports, even for known issues, as they may contain various hints to help us fix them.

Living Settlements

Will the workers consume items like food and other resources from my base?

They won’t consume items to fulfill their needs, but they can be given food and healing wraps/potions as all thralls could before. They can also take food from a thrall pot if available.

Will guards continue guarding or will they wander around like workers?

Archers, fighters, and performers will stay put and continue emoting as you set them. Only workers will have needs and act on them.

Will workers be able to use elevators, open doors and gates?

We don’t have plans to allow them to use elevators. Worker followers will wander on a valid direct path from one place to the other. They will, on the other hand, be able to open doors and gates to go about their business.

What happens to thralls stored in chests/fridges?

Workers that are stored in chests/fridges before the update will remain stored until you place them in the world. Once placed they cannot be itemized again or stored away, equal to the current system for fighters, archers, and performers.

Do we need to place one thrall per station?

As soon as the worker joins your clan (aka. is placed on the ground) their bonuses will apply and they will be visible in all profession-aligned stations within 50m of them. (As a reference, a foundation block is 2,56x2,56 meters.) For example, a newly recruited blacksmith would appear on the blacksmith’s bench, the tinker’s bench, and so on. Therefore, one thrall of each profession is enough to cover several stations at once.

Are crafter thralls that are set to follow affected by the DBNO rules?

Yes. Crafter thralls downed in battle will await for you to restore them back to health. Up to 3 strikes within the system timeframe before they die permanently.

Players usually trade and gift thralls to others while they are still itemized, will this still be possible?

As long as they aren’t placed in the world, they will be an item that can be traded just like any freshly converted thrall.

Will the thrall cap change with the update?

Our team is testing the performance around the living settlements extensively, and if we decide to reduce the thrall limit, we will make sure to announce it beforehand. It would also only be enforced on official servers. At the moment, we’re hopeful that it won’t come to that, as the animations only occur when a player is nearby.

What will happen to existing followers if workers exceed the thrall cap on official servers?

You won’t be able to place workers that exceed the thrall cap. When the update goes live, all crafter thralls will still be inventory items that will need to be placed into the world, which will obey the existing thrall caps.

Could we limit where workers go or have off-limits places in our bases?

Crafter thralls will wander to fulfill their needs up to 50m from the workstations. They wouldn’t need to wander away and access other rooms in your base if they have a campfire, bed, and seating locations near their stations. Building and decorating with this in mind can help you limit access, such as with tavern patrons.

Can we control which beds, chairs, and other placeables we would like for them to use?

There is no direct control or toggle at this moment for this level of control, but as stated above, you could potentially limit their access by planning on where to build your workshop and installations to fulfill their needs.

Could we set up specific behavior for workers - do this, stay here, emote?

Their “need” will prevail over any player’s command. Emoting isn’t removed, but since followers override it almost immediately, they effectively can’t do it.

Is there any particular reason why we want workers to be able to fight?

The purpose of Living Settlements is to make things feel more organic, natural, and immersive. They’re humans just like everyone else, as they always should have been. Protect them, or let them fight, that’s up to you, Exile.

Is the Living settlements feature Moddable?

Yes! All the parameters are moddable. You could create new needs, new objects that fulfill the needs, and new behaviors. Everything is there* *for you to play with and create new awesome features for your mod!

Companions

Does the sorcerer use spells?

We don’t want to spoil the fun, you will be able to find that out soon.

Can multiple people do the quest for one NPC simultaneously in a clan?

Yes, each player character will have their own progression through the quests. And can restart them to recruit more companions as soon as they are over with the previous one.

Will there be more Companions in the future?

Multiple chapters. 2 companions at launch with future chapters introducing more.

Can I have more than 1 companion at the same time?

Yes, you can have multiple companions of the same character active at the same time. You can go through the quests as many times as you want to recruit them.

Are companions more powerful than other followers?

They have unique and new perks, but their power is balanced with existing followers.

If my companion dies, will I have to go through the quests again?

Yes. Their quests are repeatable activities in which you can differentiate their perks by your character’s actions.

Will Companions be added to Isle of Siptah?

No. They are specific to the Exiled Lands map, and their quests and voice lines are heavily based on locations and details from the original map.

Cages in the Exiled Lands

Will the cages in Exiles Lands be accompanied by Jailors as well?

Yes. You can find them around the areas where cages are present and fight them for the keys.

Are the cages going to be adjusted/balanced so that we get a better selection of thralls including T4 in those cages? If so, will this change apply to Siptah as well?

We have updated cages to also dish out barkeepers and crafting thralls, so the balance has changed in terms of what is available, but there is not a higher chance to get a T4 thrall from cages. T4’s have always been possible to get, the chance is just lower. This all applies to Siptah as well.

Exiles thank you for your support while we cook the new Age of Heroes!


Follow-up Q&A

Check out the follow-up questions we’ve gathered from this thread and answered here!

21 Likes

you are changing the way we play this game, we have zero control on how they behave, which sucks, this is a cosmetic change i should be able to do with it as i want, not as dennis wants.

BAD Move. really bad move.

lol, i can see this as a pvp issue just there.

simms anyone? are we haviing sex emotes soon? because you know humans has needs. LOL

you are limiting us as to which thralls can use the feature, it shouild be MY decision as a player to set up my settlement the way i want, not something dennis decides. so i am guessing the archers, fighters, performers and bearers do not have needs? pets does not have any needs? only crafters has needs? … unbelievable,

why? whats the logic at this? this is BS…

botton line a forced update on everyone with no control of what we can do ., right?

15 Likes

Thank you, @Caroll for the extensive Q&A write-up. While I am still distressed on how this will be modifying the game - I appreciate the effort to try and communicate with us and answer some of our questions that we have been trying desperately to get answers to.

I do have one other question - will the Living Settlements feature be added in a way that it could be toggled, or turned off, either at the server level? Or as a mod? I would expect the ability to disable such a feature would go a LONG way to appeasing those who are nervous/worried about this changing the dynamics of the game.

You know - you CAN add the feature. AND not dynamically modify the way the game is played. You know… if you want to.

10 Likes

Does this include the stoves? What about nearby storage? Will they be able to access that? If the beds are several floors (three) above where they are, will they go to them?

Looks like I have work to do with the barracks locations. They are not furnished at the moment. Not to mention, I do not think the barracks have the available space.

4 Likes

i do aprecciate your concern, but that does not help official server players, this should be entirely optional as it only COSMETIC.

i would like to have my thralls in benches, and have some of them bring life to my place. and i want my fighters to contribute to it.

a 10 people clan that has 10 small bases, will need their thralls, based on my calculations.

you will need 15 thralls to fully manage a entire settlement, : 3 blakcsmiths, 3 armorer, 3 carpetners, 2 taskmasters, 1 alchemist, 1 tanner, 1 cook, 1 smelter.

multiply that by 10 that is 150 crafters, or did we loose the ability to each member to experience the building system? are we supposed to live in comunism? in a 50Sq mts space? everyone living and sharing one single spot? I don’t like comunism…

3 Likes

Thank you! This was very much needed and hoped for, and I’m grateful to see it.

I have some additional questions that I hope you and the rest of the team might answer:

  • Certain workstations have recipes that require specific T4 thralls. For example, Tanner’s Table requires a T4 tanner to extract silk or weave, whereas a T4 armorer allows you to stitch hides into thick hides. How does the new UI deal with this?
  • Are wandering crafters designed to navigate stairs and/or ramps, or can those be used as a way to set “boundaries” for their wandering?
  • What’s the difference between placing a crafter at an arbitrary point in the world and explicitly placing it as “assigned” to a workstation?
  • I assume we can still knock out NPCs, drag them to the wheel of pain, and “break” them. Can we get a confirmation that this will produce an inventory-item crafter that we can trade?
  • On a PVP server, can you knock out placed crafters? Or is this still something you can only do to NPCs?
8 Likes

ten bases?
You’re kidding, right?
There are 5 of us and we have 3.
One is a small part of the original larger one at Sinkhole where practically only our temples remained and we really don’t want to rebuild those, plus it’s handy to have an outpost in that area.
then a new “main” base in the highlands and a small one for the purges near “the Den”.
The craftsmen are (except maybe one or two cooks) only at the main base, and the ToS mentions that the stations should not be duplicated.

Why on earth 15 craftsmen for each?
and even if we did, we have room - as a 5 member clan we have a limit of 125 and we’re somewhere just over 70 thralls

1 Like

every member in our clan, does play and enjoy the build system, based on your numbers lets call it 6 bases, for a 10 man clan, that is 6x15 just for crafters who does nothing for you that they did not did before without eating your pool of available spots.

1 Like

15 crafters :
you will need 3 blacksmiths , 3 armorers, 3 carpenters, 2 taskmasters, 1 smelter, 1 tanner, 1 cook 1 alchemist

that is if you want to have all options opened in that other location :

maybe this will be the time to get rid of specializations, and have all bonuses given by each crafter. just to lower the count of how many you need to run efficiently. ?

2 Likes

Do you play PVP? Most of us who play on PVE and PVE-C prefer to each have their own base, rather than share one, but I can see the logic in sharing the same base on a PVP server.

That said, I respectfully disagree with @Hansel about whether this is a good change or not. Sure, it will most likely make it hard – or even impossible – to have 10 fully functional and mutually independent bases for 10 players, but I think that’s a positive outcome. Maybe being in a clan on a PVE or PVE-C server will finally have a purpose other than just having another chat channel to hang around in.

3 Likes

The thrall limit should be increased, not decreased. Besides having to share the thrall limit with the artisans, are you still thinking about reducing it? Considering that, I would prefer stationary blacksmiths hammering 24/7 it would be cheaper than an ia instance. I can see my settlement becoming less lively with this change, empty stations and a few poor souls around the fire, with a solitary skinny horse , having more than one would be a extravaganza, and weak guards. At least make the mannequins poseable and able hold weapons so we can use them as guards or behind a counter. I will have chosee between the white horse, the black or the camel to give place to a crafter.

5 Likes

thx so much its gonna really nice to see when we can uhhh cannot wait to build up my khitan city, and see them open and close the doors to the houses lets gooo :smiley:

1 Like

So, it sounds like you can place 1 smelter and 10 furnaces, and all 10 furnaces would get the +crafting speed benefit from the single smelter?

10 Likes

Thank you for this update; I wanted to ensure I say this asap. I’ll have to re-review once I am done my workday to truly absorb it.

Edit: @stelagel, Mayra didn’t leave us :grin:

3 Likes

the way i am seeing it, i do not see a good reason for being in a clan in pve. it punish people for being in one. first with the overall count vs a single user, now this.

how our clan is going to deal with this change i dont know.

1 Like

Yeah. That may be worth the risk of having them moving around all noisey like in a pvp environment. 1 Alchemist managing 15 DP factories.

1 Like

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

I think someone over there needs to revisit the RNG rates then. The only consistent t4 that I have ever gotten from a cage is the bearer cage @ Leyshrine of the Birdmen. Out of the years playing, I have never seen a T4 in a cage outside of that one.

This suggests (with how the cages work as well) that the two ways to get thralls (cages and breaking on a WOP) will continue to have different mechanics in that the WOP thralls are still inventory items until placed while the caged thralls will natively be in a placed state upon released from their cage. Can we get a confirmation that this is the case and also will this remain as the plan or is there future updates planned that the WOP will also deliver a placed thrall?

4 Likes

Good question, if we need to place it straight away out of the wheel for example then i see no real issue.

If they automatically get placed when done however… then odds are likely my fresh converts will get placed under my base since i’ve placed my WoP under ground level, so that only the top totem-ey looking part is visible and interacted with.

1 Like

I have a question: Has the undermeshing and foundation sinking bugs been fixed and will be released with Age of Heroes, Chapter 1?

4 Likes

Yeah that’s why I suspect WOP thralls will remain inventory types because of the pain point of having them pop out as a placed thrall. I just don’t see it working out well for the game to try to make that consistent with the cages. How do you control the release of the thralls in the WOP without upending a crap-ton of established and stable workings?

2 Likes