How do caravans actually work?

Chicago

so i was thinking about caravans and it dawned on me that i have no idea how these actually work, if someone could answer this for me id be very greatful,

okay so from what i understand a caravan is able to hold 100x what a player can hold, but here is what i dont understand, if it takes a player 30 minutes to an hour to fill their inventory Wich seems fair that would put the time frame to fill a caravan at around 50-100 hours of gathering just to prepare the caravan for transit, wich seems like an extremley huge risk to even think about using them,

also will we be able to summon our caravans and then dismiss them at different parts of the map to fill them with different materials, and if so it would almost make the whole guarding caravans invalid as you can just put them back into your inventory and run to another location and re summon them? if not and they have to be active and following us around while we run through the world does that make the player with the caravan permanently pvp flagged as it is technically a pvp event and anyone in the world would be able to gank them before they even begin the journey back to their node?,

are their certain spots that your caravan even begins its journey back to the city? i know there are different routes that you can take but if its the same 3 or 4 paths then people will just wait on the road to gank the caravans and setup road blocks, wich i am fine with im just trying to get an understanding of how it will all work, i know its risk vs reward but the risk seems extremley high and doesnt really make sense to me,

also i really hope materials are not SO common that it just takes a couple of hours to fill a caravan that is suppose to hold 100x what a player can hold, thanks guys please no toxicness in the comments lets have a real talk about this one!

pyreal

I think it's more like this:

You bring back mats to storage in town
You summon caravan at Caravan building in town with desired load and destination

Arya_Yeshe

There's three kinds of caravans.

The no reason to exist caravan, that is a caravan that pops from a gate when a node is upgraded, this caravan is invulnerable, there are no interactions with it, then this caravan arrives at the node and it gets upgraded. It's kinda the idea of a cinematic thing. These can't be attacked anyway.

There's the caravans that are related to helping upgrade your node, it is equivalent to doing PvE activities that also helps upgrading the node. No cares about losing these.

Then there's player caravans that can be started by any storages, including from the freehold, so you can bring your stuff from the freehold to the node and vice-versa, etc Here is where you can lose all your stuff, if you know for sure you will die, it would be better doing 10 mule rules with green safety, since greens can't be CCed, etc.

A caravan will conclude it's travel when it gets within range of it's destination.

Azherae

At the moment we know very little and it is the system that I currently see the most 'concern and distress' from the community over (ever since the Corruption system stopped getting seriously talked about after a certain announcement).

As usual, you should probably read the Wiki. I normally don't give this answer because often the Wiki paraphrases or outright seems to misinterpret some random quote, but Caravans is one of the few things that I think we just don't know much and all the 'wait why would it work that way?' questions seems to be valid.

It is probably a system with a level of ambition and planning required that is higher than many others in the game, so it might be difficult for the Devs to talk about it right now.

From the Econ player perspective, they should work fine, if I make 6 specific assumptions, so I don't have any reason to be concerned about them other than the lack of known 'downside' for attacking them.

Anyways:

1. Caravans would probably be used for groups, and are moreso for 'storage-to-storage', saving time.
2. Caravans can take different routes supposedly and don't have any 'known schedules'.
3. There's not much clear information about anything else.

Chicago

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

There's three kinds of caravans.

The no reason to exist caravan, that is a caravan that pops from a gate when a node is upgraded, this caravan is invulnerable, there are no interactions with it, then this caravan arrives at the node and it gets upgraded. It's kinda the idea of a cinematic thing. These can't be attacked anyway.

There's the caravans that are related to helping upgrade your node, it is equivalent to doing PvE activities that also helps upgrading the node. No cares about losing these.

Then there's player caravans that can be started by any storages, including from the freehold, so you can bring your stuff from the freehold to the node and vice-versa, etc Here is where you can lose all your stuff, if you know for sure you will die, it would be better doing 10 mule rules with green safety, since greens can't be CCed, etc.

A caravan will conclude it's travel when it gets within range of it's destination.

ahh makes a bit more sense thank you, tbh it would probably be worth just doing mule runs to the other cities depending on where the mats you are farming are located

greens not being able to be CCd is a massive let down for anyone that wants to play rogue

bloodprophet

Video from a couple of years ago. Steven spawns a caravan at 1:06:00 and takes off across the country side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkwaYLOuw2s

tautau

Here is the wiki link: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans

They do start at a caravanserai: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans#Caravanserai and not out in the countryside.

There are three types (quest, personal & mayoral...but a different wiki list says quest, personal & naval), per the wiki, but they are not the types Arya mentioned above (no idea where his information came from, it is not correct). While a player carries items and gatherables in their backpack (which can vary in size depending on what one is purchased or crafted), the backpack (and possibly mule or equivalent) is not the same thing as a caravan. You can carry your backpack worth of goods to whatever node you travel to, or at least you could in Alpha 1 but that is not a caravan.

Caravans will be related to quests and node growth, though most of the details we will have to wait for Alpha 2 and release to know for sure. The caravans that a mayor creates will probably be related to creating and levelling up certain types of buildings in the node. It is likely that individuals will have to participate in caravans for various kinds of personal growth as well as for economic reasons.

Roxi

Steven said that crafters will create/recycle things using the inventory of the warehouse. Therefore, I can conclude that caravans will be needed to transport resources in large quantities - most often. And used by crafters/gatherers/traders... I think merchants will sell items using Nod's warehouse inventory too.

Arya_Yeshe

Remember that AoC will follow the slot/stack inventory system and not weight system

So, you could pretty much have your inventory full of wool flip flops

Roxi

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Remember that AoC will follow the slot/stack inventory system and not weight system

So, you could pretty much have your inventory full of wool flip flops

this is what will force you to store resources in large warehouses.