Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

The devs have said no to hirelings (NPCs). Its supposed to feel "lonely" you are essentially in Viking purgatory.

Up until the introduction of neutral Dverger in Mistlands I would have agreed with you...

Oh yes and excepting Haldor the "Trader" that doesn't seem to know there is nobody to trade to!

Oh yes and the immanent introduction of another NPC....

as well as the facility for you to play with (presumably) 9 other members of your old Warband when you were alive

I'm not having a go at Knight here rather pointing out the "Mixed signals" the Devs toss out on the subject.

Surely the balance has to be apart from actual player companions, the NPC's are very few and far between.

There will be no NPC "Hirelings"a sits YOU (and maybe your pals) Odin has task to suppress the Forsaken for another age not you and a buncha/Elves/Dwarves/Mercs from elsewhere the game lore is clear: the players are "Almost Hero's" that failed at making the grade for Valhalla by such a small margin craft Odin figured they might be good enough for a little task he had in mind and if not, no loss to him, and well worth the small inconvenience of sending and rescuing them from Valheim IF they do destroy the enemies trapped their once more.

Now if I were the Devs I'd look at the clamour for more community/NPC for Valheim 2.0 which could be built with stuff like that in mind.

Valheim is a prison world for enemies of the gods, it doesn't need to "feel alive" like your typical medieval fantasy world.

I dont care if they add NPCs I would rather see more Livestock. Even if we couldn't kill it it would be nice to see. Squirrels, goats, lions, tigers and bears oh my. ETC

Maybe there will be bears in the far north. Otherwise the world is full of critters. They just all want to eat you. The npcs we do have are pretty ho hum and counterintuitive, like why would the only nice guys be ones we have to kill? Not sure this team is one that would do a great job at what you want from what we have seen so far.

Would also like to see some critters but maybe only ones that might actually have existed, like early sheep, goats, ponies, (not rideable) maybe, squirrels, nothing too exotic or out of sync with history. And of course they would have to hate us, like the pigs, or be very afraid like the deer. But the devs have already stated they want to keep stuff useful so there would need to be a reason for them to be there which would mean a game overhaul; unlikely at this time. Guess would have to leave it up to a clever modder.

May be contraversial but I prefer it sans too many NPC's, I like having the world mostly all to myself... and the graydwarves I guess.

I would love to see some NPC to interact with, at least for resource trade. Haldor isn't exactly useful beyond getting a couple things for progression.

There is a nice merchant mod that makes Haldor buy/sell more types of things, and give quests. There are even named enemies. This helps, but still feels very empty.

I would like to see villages with a few settlers, farms with a farmer or two on them. Even non-humans, as long as there can be some interaction. Maybe factions, maybe resource quests to help them rebuild their cabins and such. Maybe a ferry captain or a fishmonger.

There is a lot of potential.

Well in the 2021 roadmap there was something called Svartalfr Brigands, I assume bandits. Don't know if it was scrapped though

Originally posted by RedHaze1911:

Originally posted by Hiryukaen:

The plot of the game establishes that it's essentially a wasteland devoid of life other than monsters

Xept for 9 other people u mean? xD

You asked what the devs will do, not what players can do. Players are sent there specifically by Odin. Between the intro text and the runestones it's explained it's devoid of other "people," exceptions being the merchants which seem to have unfinished lore but have been hinted that they have a way to travel into Valheim, at least one way and mistlands npcs who are either one of the only remaining civilizations or have/had the same ability as merchants.

There are runestones that chronicle previous iterations, Ulf, Astrid, Harald, Gudrun and probably more in the future.

Originally posted by Hiryukaen:

The plot of the game establishes that it's essentially a wasteland devoid of life other than monsters

Xept for 9 other people u mean? xD

Well, I like a more lively feel so I use mods that give a few more air, land and sea animals and a mod for hiring mercenaries and creating necromantic minions. The backstory of the game doesn't really interest me, personally, so I treat the worlds as if they were pure exploration and survival. I don't even like all the islands scattered over the map, so I use Better Continents to generate larger land masses. Well, it's a largely a single-player game (I don't play "multiplayer") so we can all play in whatever manner we like. 🙂

Originally posted by RedHaze1911:

Originally posted by Hiryukaen:

The plot of the game establishes that it's essentially a wasteland devoid of life other than monsters

Xept for 9 other people u mean? xD

While I don't play in multiplayer myself (Randoms, yuk) you raise a fair point there!

The devs have said no to hirelings (NPCs). Its supposed to feel "lonely" you are essentially in Viking purgatory.

The plot of the game establishes that it's essentially a wasteland devoid of life other than monsters