4Game

So, while waiting for Hearth and Home, I decided to think of an addition to the game that probably wouldn't be added until far in the future (if ever). My idea is based on the thralls system used by the survival game, Conan Exiles. I love how the developers of this game included a race of NPCs that can be forced into defending player buildings and working at crafting stations once they are captured. This adds some fun to the endgame of Conan and the ability to have NPCs manning your castle walls is quite satisfying. Conan has a rather barbarous and meme-y way of 'recruiting' the thralls, which basically involves torturing them, but that's another matter.

This is a game about vikings! What did vikings do? They raided coastal settlements! Sometimes they even took prisoners. I think that a future update should add some human settlements for players to raid as part of the endgame. In my opinion, a cool way to implement this, would be to have a few viking strongholds spawn in the far north. Each stronghold would have a viking lord and a host of many vikings defending it. Additionally, there would be several intact human villages that would spawn in the meadows biome, which would be populated by villagers, who would be peaceful unless attacked.

The vikings in the strongholds would be extremely strong and would kill on site, so it would be a challenge to take them on, even for experienced players. Those who manage to kill the defenders and capture (defeat) the the lord, would then be rewarded by gaining the ability to recruit/capture a certain number of villagers to defend their lands and work their crafting stations. In order for villagers to be assigned to specific tasks, a lord would need to be nearby; their zone of control would be tied to the workbench, so villagers could only be assigned tasks in an area that has a workbench influenced by a lord. The AI for villagers could be pretty simple. They could be assigned to a crafting station, farming, or assigned a patrol route/ position to defend. Players could interact with them, to equip them with the gear they need. Maybe the lords and villagers could even be commanded to follow a player, up to a limit of one lord and 10 villagers per player? A limit could also be placed on the number of strongholds that would spawn, so there would only be a few lords to capture.

I think it would be reasonable to have each lord allow for the player to control about 10 villagers. With five lords in the game, this would mean that players could control a maximum of 55 npcs in a single settlement, fort, castle, etc. Players could also choose to spread out their lords to different bases, so they could have several well-defended, manned settlements. Obviously, the number of lords could be made smaller or larger, depending on the performance limitations of the game; I'm not familiar with the performance impact of NPCs in Valheim.

If anyone reads this and replies, let me know what you think of this idea. Personally, I think it would be a cool addition to the game because it would add content to the far north region, help players make more immersive bases that are populated by npcs, and just generally expand the endgame a bit.