You can get AI friends. Both friendly ones (not gonna spoil, but its a bit further still unfortunately) and less friendly, like a troll. Trolls are great for cutting down lots of trees or digging copper. They only understand guestures thou, "roll" means dig here. :P

You can also tame creatures... boars are proud and go wherever they please, but wolves can be set to follow you around (not through portals thou).

But yeah good luck.