Caravan events

Caravan event UI in Alpha-2.

Caravan event blocking a roadway in Alpha-2.

PvE Caravan events can cause roadways to be blocked off or hostile mobs to spawn to attack the caravan.

• Obstacles may present barriers on roads that players must remove or bypass to allow transit of goods.

When you're traveling with a caravan, there are events that can trigger as a result of you being there with a caravan, that can either block your way or spawn things to attack your caravan and require you to make decisions about how you want to proceed; whether you turn around and go somewhere else or you find a path off-road: all with different kinds of dangers associated with them. – Chris Justo

List of caravan events

Event	Type	Location	Objective
Escort the Caravan	Caravan events	Riverlands	Escort the caravan

Caravans

Alpha-2 caravan being escorted to the Miraleth node.

The Caravan System is a major aspect of the economy in Ashes of Creation. While the rewards can be great for moving massive amounts of Commodities and other materials across the world of Verra, players can choose to be Caravan attackers or defenders, making these hotspots for PvP battles.

Caravan PvP in Alpha-2.

Caravans are vehicles that facilitate the transfer of cargo across Verra.

Caravans are the induction of emergent gameplay, which means you cannot predict the situation you're going to be in when you use a caravan. That's part of the risk: The risk is the unknown. If you could predict it then your ability to mitigate that risk would unfortunately remove that dynamic- that ratio of risk versus reward. – Steven Sharif

• Personal caravans are used to transport cargo for one or more players.

• Mayoral caravans are used by Mayors to transfer cargo between nodes with established trade agreements or alliances.

• Caravans are initiated from and arrive at caravansary node buildings within Village (stage 3) nodes and above.

• Caravans create an objective-based PvP event in the open-world that players can choose to attack, defend, or opt-out of.

• PvE caravan events can cause roadways to be blocked off or hostile mobs to spawn to attack the caravan.

• It is possible to launch decoy caravans and merchant ships, but there are visual hints of what is contained in a caravan. Decoy crates may be available via social organization progression.

Personal caravans

Caravan speed is affected by caravan components and the type of roading.

There'll be different variants of each of the components, with the wheels for example, would have variants that will excel perhaps at off-road over on-road and vice versa. So right now we have caravans that are set up more for the on-road portion, but you will travel faster over roads, but that obviously comes with the increased risk of running into other players or monsters that are blocking the road. – Chris Justo

Personal caravans of different tiers deployed outside the Winstead node in Alpha-2. 3D models by Hal Anderson.

Personal caravans (also referred to as Self-directed/player-driven caravans) are utilized by players to transport cargo across Verra. These are land-based and water-based (raft caravans) that a single player drives and directs.

• Personal caravans are prepared and launched from caravansary buildings at Village (stage 3) or higher nodes.

• Personal caravans can also be summoned in the open-world from caravansaries in nearby nodes.

• Personal caravans are capable of transitioning to/from raft caravans.

• Caravan components modify caravan stats and grant passive and active abilities to the caravan. Components can be upgraded to increase a caravan's power.

• By default, personal caravans have a racial appearance that influences the types of animals that are moving the caravan.
  • Players will be able to apply caravan skins to change the default appearance.

• Caravan drivers receive a significant defensive buff while they are driving a caravan. This reduces CC effects and increases damage mitigation significantly.

• The caravan owner is able to grant permissions to allow other players to drive their caravans. If these permissions are not activated by the owner then anyone can drive their caravans. If the caravan driver is killed or otherwise removed from the caravan then any player will be able to drive the caravan for a period of 15 to 20 minutes before the caravan despawns and becomes a wreckage.
  • A caravan will persist in the world for a period of 5 to 10 minutes from the time its owner logs out or is disconnected from the server.

• Caravans have collision, so other players could jump on the caravan while it is being driven.
  • Players or mounts trying to block caravans will be pushed out of the way.

Mayoral caravans

Quest to launch a mayoral caravan.

Mayoral caravans (also referred to as Trade caravans) are launched by Mayors to obtain needed resources from other nodes.

• Nodes answering these resource requests must have a trade agreement or alliance with the requesting node.

• Once the requesting mayor accepts a fill order from another node, a system driven caravan is spawned to transit the goods.

• Players can participate in helping to defend the caravan if they wish.

• Trade caravans can initiate world events.

Mayors who need certain resources that either they don't have enough of, or that they're prospectively investing in: they will initiate a mayor request, and any node that sees that request on the mayoral caravan drop-down menu will have an opportunity to attempt to fulfill the trade request. In order to fulfill a trade request, a node must have a certain level of relationship with that requesting node. At a minimum it has to be a trade agreement relationship; and then there's a limited number of those trade relationships that you can have; and that scales up to eventually alliance perspective. And then, once the node requesting mayor accepts a potential fill order, then a system spawned caravan is generated and the transit is completed. Players can participate in helping to defend that or not. – Steven Sharif

World events

World events are pop up challenges that exist within open areas of wilderness or POIs, and anyone can join. They adapt in difficulty to player strength and last around 20-30 min usually (though some can be longer). – Steven Sharif

Triggering a pop-up event through player activity in Alpha-2.

The event system, it can query a lot of different aspects of the dynamic world state. Right now it's actually just tracking player activity in the world; and for this event in particular, it's looking for us to kill some stuff. So we're out here killing some stuff and eventually the event should trigger once it's detected enough player activity. – Clayton Stamper

World events (also called Pop-up events) are small-scale triggered events that exist within open areas of wilderness or POIs.

• World events are triggered (and progressed) based on various predicates in the world, such as player activity, resource harvesting, trade caravans, node states, and story arcs.

• World events adapt to the strength of the participants. The more players participating in an event the more challenging the event will become and the higher the rewards will be for completing the event.
  • Participation is not based purely on numbers of players joining the event.
  • Player power and NPC power is not scaled up or down, rather the number and types of NPCs in the event will be affected.

We're not talking about scaling up the player's power, scaling down the power of the NPCs, but rather how many additional spawners start to activate, what different types of NPCs start to join; are they going to be elites? Is there a boss? Those types of things are scalable as part of the event system. – Steven Sharif

• Any player can join a world event.

• Joining a world event as a party will merge the party into the event's raid group.
  • Players can remain in the raid group after the event or convert back to a party if they choose to do so.

• World events last around 20 to 30 minutes, but some can be longer.

• Some events incorporate random story-driven interruptions to the normal flow of the world, such as blocking off specific roadways, having a random raid boss, or mobs appear unexpectedly in a zone. Some may lead to wider consequences, such as climate change, plagues, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, or other natural disasters if they are not addressed.

• Not satisfying the objectives of an event can lead to failure.

Visuals

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See also

• Caravans
• Events
• Roads