Less than three weeks to go!
Today we’ll take a look at the last clan that will be available at the beginning of the early access, as well as some more of the special areas you can find on the maps. We’ll also take a brief look at what we’re thinking about the multiplayer features of the game, and how we’re going to make this whole early access thing work with you guys.
Stalwart, hardy and resourceful, Heidrun, the clan of the Goat can endure the harshest of winters and very likely prosper doing it. Self sufficient survivalists, give them just a pinch of good land and they’ll turn it into a thriving garden. There’s no place that the Goat can’t adapt to and call home, even the frozen shores of Northgard.
As you might have guessed Heidrun are the survivors of Northgard, their buffs are related to food and production, so they’re going to be a versatile clan that can use their advantage in resource production to whatever end they see fit.
Capable of producing not only enough food to survive, they can also export their surplus to quickly amass a fortune and out compete their neighbours. Even better, they can do all this from a small, easily defendable territory without the need to expand. As in everything care must be taken to protect one’s vast wealth, lest other less scrupulous clans seek to take a shortcut to wealth themselves.
Workers of the Heidrun clan are extra productive at the best of times consuming less food and doing more work, but when they are in high spirits there’s nothing they can’t achieve, so perhaps a feast might motivate them.
As we mentioned in previous posts there are also special tiles that if claimed can bring about special victory conditions. Heidrun, with the might of the resource production to support them, may be uniquely placed to take advantage of these opportunities. For example, discovering and colonising Yggdrasil will demand huge amounts of resources. The Goats natural ability to survive will stand them in excellent stead for this.
Furthermore, the Goat should move quickly to wrest control of any farming, hunting or fishing tiles that they find. They’ll make more efficient use of them than their enemies anyway… From this you can gather that, there are strategic tiles that will provide production bonuses to any clan that claims them first. Finding the most efficient way to exploit these tiles is one of the keys to victory for any clan in Northgard.
Now enough with tiles, victory and clans. What about the multiplayer!? Well quite simply, we’re working on it. We’re looking at various PvP and coop options and we’ll most likely start with a Steam friends system. This would allow us to test the balance of the game and test the technical aspects of running the backend, without having to code an entire server side system with all the bells and whistles.
As I’ve mentioned in some posts on various discussions, we’d like to have your feedback on this. We know that a solid multiplayer experience is fundamental to a lot of people’s expectations, so we’d like to get it right. This won’t be something that we do overnight, but it will be something that we work hard on.
Let us know what you think.
Steve and the Shiro Team.