In Nested Lands, trying to survive alone is a fool’s errand. If you truly hope to stay alive in the plague-ridden hellscape of Norovellir, you will need to go far beyond simply meeting basic needs such as hunger, thirst, and warmth. To survive, you will need to create a functioning village out of the remains of the old world. As we’ve said before:
“You must survive to grow your village, and you must grow your village to survive”.
The Village
In many ways, developing your village is one of the main goals of Nested Lands. Everything, including quests, exploration, and even your own survival, are all linked to how well you manage your settlement.
Your village is a place to rest and prepare for your next run, creating a loop of exploration and management which, if done successfully, will eventually allow you to shift your priorities from basic day-to-day survival to thriving and discovering the dark secrets of this corrupted new world.
That means that aspects such as the following will have all become both positive and, more importantly, stable:
- Protection, which measures how well your settlement is equipped to deal with threats on its own
- Decoration, which makes your villagers happier and therefore less likely to cause problems
- Warmth, which measures how prepared your villagers are for cold nights
Ordinances
While stability and abundance are the end goals for any new settlement in Norovellir, the process of achieving such a desirable outcome can be extremely challenging. To make things easier during these difficult times, players can choose to enforce certain rules and laws called Ordinances.
Ordinances change the functionality of the village itself, setting extended work hours, food rationing, order maintenance, and much more. These laws give the player a breather in times of need, and in certain cases they can be a way for players to engage in their own forms of rulership, choosing whether to focus on one aspect of their society or another.
Still, no matter how large the village becomes, it is important to always remember that the Plague and the various enemy factions around Norovellir will never cease to be a threat. In fact, the longer you go and the bigger your village becomes, the more these enemies will take notice of you.
Raids
Raids are special randomized events that may happen while you are in the village, as well as when you are away. During raids, enemies will organize a strike force against your settlement, seeking to destroy your buildings, steal your supplies, and kill your people. If you’re in the village at the time, you can fight to repel these invaders, but if you’re away, the outcome will be entirely up to the defenses you built beforehand, as well as the villagers assigned to be guards.
Still, if you’re close enough, an alarm will sound indicating that a raid is in progress so you could rush to the rescue.
Villager NPCs
There are lots of different valuable resources a village needs to be able to grow. Access to clean water and basic resources like wood and stone are a must, but you’ll also need seeds to grow food, metal ore to turn into weapons and tools, and, of course, a variety of medicinal ingredients to treat those affected by the Death Plague. Still, there is no greater need than the simplest one of all: people.
Villagers are the heart and soul of any settlement. They keep the wheels of progress turning, and the more of these allies there are, the more the player will be free to focus on other, more pressing matters.
There are dozens of jobs and occupations for NPCs, ranging from basic ones like gatherers, hunters, cooks, blacksmiths, guards and farmers, to complex ones such as nurses, brewers, miners, herbalists, priests, and even tavern keepers, all with related buildings and workplaces. Needless to say, it’s up to you where to assign each person, but wise leaders are always aware of their people’s strengths and weaknesses, which in this game are characterized by both skills and traits, some positive and some negative.
We’ll tell you more about these villager stats later, as well as how recruitment works. For now, we’ll just say that each recruitable NPC has a total of three survivor traits that define not only which occupations they are good or bad at, but also their reaction to other gameplay features such as raids, the plague, the story, and even their own goals and objectives. While some traits are revealed as soon as you meet a particular NPC, there are others, rarer and more impactful ones that are not revealed until you earn that person’s trust - or, if you’d prefer a more ruthless approach, you can extract them via intimidation. It is then up to you to decide if this person will continue living in the village, or if it’s safer to be rid of them.
Managing the village will require careful planning and execution, as well as a heavy dose of decision-making. The game’s official reveal is coming soon and, as we’ve said before, it won’t be long before we dive more deeply into the ins and outs of how villagers work in the game.
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