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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Nodeless Playthrough ( Playing as an Adventurer / Outlaw / Merchant )
SirMaddin
Member
One thing I'd like to know about this game is, how will the gameplay be for Nodeless players? Is it a valid option to be nodeless, for example as a traveling merchant, an adventurer or an outlaw? Can you still have some kind of housing like a tent? I like to imagine all the possibilities with this, like slums next to rich cities, rogue bases in the wild or caravans on busy roads.
2
Comments
You cannot have any form of housing without being a citizen; not even a tent.
Playing as homeless should be no problem.
Nothing said yet about camping in the wilds but maybe. Would be a good question for next week's Q&A.
Is this correct?
You need to acquire housing to become a citizen, not become a citizen to acquire housing.
Intrepid has explicitly stated, that they do not want to have this in their game as to not facilitate being corrupted as a valid alternative playstyle.
I am actually going to do the same, unless the military node has some cool stuff.
In the latest stream steven said that players will be able to withdraw items only from the bank where they left them at. Obviously being a citizen in all these nodes isnt required.
So if you dont care about node activities and if you trust that the node will progress without your input, you can do it.
For that reason, there will absolutely be "nodeless" players, i.e. players who are not citizens of any Node, who have no roots anywhere.
7:26 AM] Steven 😇: @Chkoupinator No, you may own up to 1 of each type of housing, but you must choose your citizenship, and this can only be changed with a cooldown of 2 weeks (still testing this change time)
Jun 26, 2020
mark 48:18
Player-owned in-node housing provides many advantages to a citizen. These amenities include, but are not limited to, extra storage, harvestable resources for farming and interior space for placeable furniture. These housing types advance and become larger as the node advances and can be resold to other players.
Sounds like you are already a citizen or you become a citizen the moment you purchase an in-node home.
I don't recall if you had to do anything else to become a citizen in Alpha 1.
But...
mark 33:34
"Nodes have a system called Citizenship and you can only declare yourself the citizen of one Node at a time (per server), there's a cooldown period if you ever renounce your Citizenship. If the Node is destroyed, you lose your Citizenship and you can join anther Node as a citizen.
The mechanism by which you become a citizen is: You must own property within the Node before you can become a citizen...
There's three versions of housing:
In-Node static housing...
The Apartment system is an instanced version where the Mayor can ellect to build apartment builds, this then allows for additional citizens to become part of the Node, which collects additional taxes, which the mayor can then devote towards strengthening the defenses of the City for future Sieges or by expanding the City's infratructure, allowing more quest content and, or social organizations to sprout up...
The Freehold system is a little parcel of land that you lay out int the open world, but it has to fall under the Zone of Influence, essentially the territory of a Node...
Those are the three housing systems. Once you become an owner of one of those under a Node, you can declare yourself a citizen and you pay taxes and stuff."
---Steven
If purchasing In-Node housing or an apartment or setting down a Freehold is not the mechanism for becoming a citizen, Steven did not actually describe the mechanism for becoming a citizen.
Seems unlikely that you can purchase a home, but not become a citizen and just avoid paying taxes.
And it seems like the point of being required to place a Freehold within a ZoI is so the Mayor can tax your parcel of land.
So...I don't think you can just place a tent somewhere without being a citizen. Regardless of whether you have to become a citizen first or whether you immediately, automatically become a citizen of the Node where your home is.
https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/256164085366915072/304631047532969984
7:55 AM] Steven 😇: @[AXIOM] Fwuppers There are taxes due on all property that prevents inactivity. These taxes are given to the local node.
Taxes on property seems to indicate citizenship. Especially when paired with the quote:
"Once you become an owner of one of those under a Node, you can declare yourself a citizen and you pay taxes and stuff."
Also:
If a player wants to achieve a freehold they can achieve the freehold, however the amount of effort resources and time that's required in order to achieve that freehold is a large amount. It is something that is a monumental achievement for you to to get that freehold; and the reason why is because freeholds tie in very heavily to the processing artisanship aspect. Some processing can be done in nodes, but the best processing is done on freeholds; and we want to make sure that there's a little bit of a throttle or gate on the amount of effort that's necessary to achieve that influence over the processing market.
---Steven
That amount of effort seems considerably different than just plopping down a tent.
A Freehold is land ownership; not squatting. Sure, you could probably apply a tent skin to a Freehold building. But, you shouldn't expect to be carrying around a tent in your backpack and just picking it up and placing backdown wherever you choose to camp for the night, as you roam the world.
They haven't really said what kind of stuff there well be for non-node affiliated people. Have only really talked about what you can do as a citizen, probably to try and push you to join one and be social.
There was a thread a while ago where people talked about having some sort of universal 'adventure's guild' type thing to progress with which would fall in line with what you're asking about, but it was all just ideas people had not confirmed stuff.
Why would they?
Do guildless people get perks? No.
Do religionless people get alternative perks? No.
Do familyless people get alternative perks? Probably no.
I mean, you already have perks for being nodeless:
P.S. @SirMaddin
as a travelling merchant, you do indeed want to be the citizen of a node. Preferably the citizen of an economic metropolis, as that's the one that allows you the purchase of Player-Shop Certificates. (allow you to globally set up a player-shop)
It would royally suck to move your goods from Node A to Node C and not have a way to sell them efficiently afterwards, since you can't buy a player-stall nor do you have a freehold in the city
Quote on that:
https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/256164085366915072/721883912825208953
Outlaw aren't facilitates by being Nodeless. As the corruption system applies whether you are a citizen or not. Corruption makes you essentially Nodeless for the time you are corrupted, as entering a node would be suicide.
I understand what you're saying here but my biggest complaint would be on a map this large and no global fast travel you would end up playing the majority of the game in one corner of the world and never get to see all it has to offer... Which kinda sucks.
Why is that @SirChancelot
You can be the citizen of a node and still travel around. Its not like the node puts a leash on your neck that pulls you back whenever you move more than 15km away.
You won't profit a whole lot from the Node, as you elect to play in the opposite corner of the map, but that's your prerogative. I mean, the only way node citizenship would affect you negatively in this case would be if you were trying to travel to a node that is at war with yours.
Your argument for why you would only play the game in one corner of the world is exactly why you shouldn't play the game in only one corner of the world.
If your home Node is in the Desert biome, people in the Snow biome on the other side of the world will pay 10 times the price of Sand in the Desert biome. And, on the way back home, why not buy a couple of polar bear furs and sell it in your home Node for 10x the price that you paid for in the Snow biome.
I understand why you think the way you do, and I'm sure many people think the same way, that's why I'll be rich and you'll be poor, which is fine if you ask me.
I get that this is an opinion thing, and I'm not saying I have a solution either.
But I feel like if I have all my stuff in one place, my house in one place, my guild plays here, if I want my node to grow I should do activities here to feed it XP, if my node is attacked I should be here to defend it... It seems like a lot of things that discourage you traveling further than what you can reach in an evening.
@BaSkA13 that is a really good point for the people who want to make money, or are big into crafting. But if I hear about a dungeon that sounds cool on the opposite side of the map do I just go there and try to bum off local groups, or should I try to get a whole party to coordinate this cross map trek?
But I'm just speculating here, I don't actually know how long it would take for me to travel around the world in ashes. They have mentioned limited flight paths or fast travel, so maybe I'm just worrying too much.
It makes sense that they don't want to encourage Players to harass others. Maybe the Corruption System could be a good counter incentive for this?
To my knowledge there will be also instanced player housing. Will this be limited too in a city node?
Makes sense too me. I guess, my idea of a "Nodeless player" was to create an alternative playstyle too a full citizen. Either as a freeloader who doesn't want or can pay taxes and has therefore less protection or maybe even as kind of a social group. A band of outcast so to say.
I don't know if this is still relevant but as far as I know there can't be two fully advanced cities next to each other. Maybe this could give us some space on adjacent nodes for some of these concepts or other new ideas.
I would love too see this discussed in the next Q&A. Do you know how I can submit it?
Usually, a week before the livestream, Sir Vaknar The Awesome posts a Q&A thread in the Announcements section, where you can put one question, the shorter the better. People don't tend to read the instructions and end up posting three or four huuuuuuge long questions, that then just end up getting ignored cos they haven't followed the instructions.
That is entirely dependent on how daring and confident you are. If this game was real life then travelling across the world would be dangerous. Exploring is literally an adventure, get your friends and guildies together to travel if you like. Or stay in your local nodes without seeing the world. The limitations are yours to set for yourself, whatever you are comfortable with.
And don't forget that a Science Metropolis allows fast travel from there to any of the local nodes. Not Global but I would like to see teleportation between all Scientific Metropolises as well if there are multiple ones. (Source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Scientific_nodes)
Nah, if all five Metropolises were Scientific, that'd give you fast travel to every node in the game. I think the Scientific Fast Travel thing is a cop-out as it is. "No Fast Travel" should mean: "No Fast Travel". At the moment, we've got a "No Fast Travel" that means Scientific Metro Fast Travel and Family System Fast Travel. None should mean none.
It'll be whichever ones happen to be levelled the fastest.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something (feel free to correct me), a Metropolis has a connection to nearby nodes, but all 5 wouldn't have a connection to all 100+ nodes on the map would they? Maybe the ZOI is bigger than I'm imagining it looking at the Wiki.
Zoi is 20% of the map.
Scientific fast travel should hypothetically allow you to teleport to a Node at the edge of the ZOI then cross the border to the other Metro's ZOI and use their fast travel system to teleport in that network.
Unless its only possible to teleport from the metro itself. Which is my secret hope
You will definitely hear about raids, dungeons, world bosses, etc. which are located on the other side of the world, probably via meta-gaming sources like Discord.
If it's in your group's best interest to try to beat that content, you will need to prepare and invest just to give it a try. If it's open world content, you'll either need to make alliances there or bring a shitload of people. You'll probably get wiped and/or run out of resources, and since you won't have your home Node storage with you, you'll need to buy supplies there, so you will need gold for that.
In my opinion, the best way to approach this scenario is to think of this expedition as a trip to a different country: you only take clothes and money with you and you come back home with memories, pictures and maybe some souvenirs. Focus on the souvenirs 😎
On the other hand there will be dungeons, raids, world bosses, etc. close to your home Node, so when that happens you'll have the upper hand.
That's why living in the center of the map and/or close to the water will probably be a good idea and highly sought after, as it will make moving around the map easier, faster and cheaper.
I believe there have been some misunderstandings regarding Fast Travel:
So, unless I'm missing something:
So, even if all five Metropolises are Scientific and if their locations are "optimal", if you want to cross the map you'll need to take an airship, not teleport. And you'll have to be a citizen of a Metropolis or its vassal nodes, which I'm pretty sure won't be something easy or cheap.
So, to illustrate, let's imagine there are three Scientific Metropolises A, B and C. If you're a citizen of Metropolis A and you want to go to Metropolis B, you can take the airship from A to B. However, if you want to go to Metropolis C but you're in Metropolis B, you will not be able to take the airship from B to C. You will need to go back to Metropolis A and then take the airship to Metropolis C.
In other words, faster travel is great, but it doesn't break the game, that's why it's called a superpower.
ZOI will be up to 20% of the map, I think. Depending on which nodes grow, a metro may have a smaller ZOI. For example, a node near a map corner may grow to lvl 5 and two nodes which kind of hem the first in could also grow to lvl 5, right?
I suspect that there will no server with 5 Scientific Metropolis within in first two years after release. My $10 against your $5. Who wants that bet?
If reaching Metropolis level is as hard as I believe it might be, I'll be surprised if most servers even achieve 5 Metropolises of any kind within two years.
Now I know you can't just camp anywhere but what if you could purchase a timed stall permit from the node in question (even at the expedition stage) that allows you place a stall within that ZOI anywhere (with restrictions on not too close to dungeons etc).
Or perhaps a travelling merchant caravan with NPC merchants? (can't remember if those are a thing, I remember the travelling booze caravan hehe)