I, just like everyone else that has ever picked up a heroic treasure and seen how much it slows you down, want some sort of cart or wagon in the game to help move things around. But I was thinking: what if we expand on the golem building system added in the last age and make wagons modular.
Here is my idea: A new crafting station called a Trade Depo which the wagons are built at. It would be quite big, maybe roughly the size of the animal pen, with platforms and ropes and whatnot so just like with the golem workbench you can see what bits are being added to the wagon as its built. Wagons are a mount and as such use up your mount slot, not a follower slot. You could make the system for building the wagons really basic, with just three slots for the horse that pulls it, the body and the tray that carries stuff (and more on the tray in a bit), or you could go more complex with slots for the body, armour and cosmetics like lights. Just like with golems different parts improve different stats and not just armour and HP, different bodies or draft horses (which Im thinking would be an item you buy from an NPC since draft horses need to be trained from a young age meaning the ones we catch wild would not be suitable, and it also means people canât block the spawn points like they do for the current horses) could improve movement speed or the amount of stamina used for sprinting. If you wanted to get really fancy you could even make it so parts you find in the world as loot have differing stats from what a player can build (either better or worse, one body could increase movement speed at the expense of HP for instance) so that each wagon is unique. Just like a golem they wouldnât heal naturally, but maybe they could be docked back into a Trade Depo to allow parts to be changed out and for repair. It would also be cool if there was a setting to allow human thralls to mount the carriage and hang off the sides when the player mounts so that you can all travel together. In this state they wouldnât attack anything so you could run through hostile areas without thralls constantly getting attacked and you needing to use the âreturnâ command.
Letâs come back to the trays though. This would be the major selling point of wagons, and there would be at least 3, possibly 4, different kinds you could equip a wagon with.
Type 1 would be a basic flat bed that gives the wagon an inventory, at least 30 slots but maybe as high as 50. As you fill the wagon up more boxes are visually added to the tray so in pvp people would know when you are full of loot and whether its worth attacking you or no, which I think would add some fun scenarios where people trail a caravan until it gets to its location and loads up and then setting up an ambush somewhere. Apparently in the next update we will be able to hire NPC mercenaries to defend our bases, so maybe we could also hire some to follow our wagons around.
Type 2 would carry heroic treasures. Like the flatbed whatever is loaded into it show on the model so people know how much loot you are carrying. Mechanically it would work by adding an interaction point somewhere at the back of the model of the wagon; pressing your use key when you are carrying a treasure loads it inside, pressing your use key if your hands are empty unloads the last one put in.
Type 3 I think would be the one that gets most people excited: A slave taker cage. It can carry several knocked-out NPCâs (Iâm thinking 8, the max number that can be placed in a Greater Wheel of Pain) at a time allowing for bulk transport of new thralls or sorcery sacrifices. Similar to the one for carrying treasures there would be an interaction sport on the back, using this while you have a roped NPC loads them in and interacting while you have a rope equipped but empty puts them back onto your rope.
Type 4 would be for bulk transport of players or thralls. I think it would be cool to have wagons that could carry new players to bases far across the map or for shifting lots of thralls if you move base. The coding and server load of moving lots of people might be a bit heavy through, so I think this one would be the least reasonable to implement.
The final idea I have is that so the Trade Depo isnât completely useless after you have built a wagon it could also serve as a hub where you can sell off things to help your clan make money. Like the treasure coffer building a Trade Depo creates an NPC nearby that you can talk to, and they offer a UI containing trade deals, both things you can sell for cash (like stacks of basic resources and crafted weapons) and useful things you can buy (like alchemy base or hardened steel bars). To stop large clans amassing unlimited wealth there might be only 3 â 4 trades offered per day per clan, and once those are filled you need to wait for a daily reset before more are offered.