Testlive Patch - Followers II: Stances, Command system and more!

For those curious as to what's going on on the TestLive branch, you can check out the notes here! Coming hot on the trails of our previous content patch, conveniently titled Followers I, and as announced in our producer letter, we feel now ready to deploy on Testlive the first iteration of our next game update: Followers II! Given the amazing reception you all gave to our new commitment to make Testlive a meaningful platform to test and improve upon new features, we feel this is the right time to let you all have a first look at our new batch of changes and improvements aimed at overhauling how you interact with your followers.

Among these changes comes a very long and oft-requested feature, AI stances! We have also added a command system for your active follower, so you can give direct orders such as move and attack. There’s more changes and improvements that come with these new additions that will generally improve how AI reacts and interacts in the game. We have also included a couple of commonly requested quality of life changes that will make your adventures in the Exiled lands even more amazing: you can now have a companion and a horse active at the same time, and while riding you can also drag any unconscious NPCs!

We’d love if you would give all these changes a try and let us improve on these features by sending us any feedback you might have regarding possible issues here. Remember, this Testlive update is still a work in progress build and many things might still be still under active development!

Thanks again for your ongoing feedback and support.

Please remember that updates can mess with your installed mods. We suggest taking a backup of your current database before updating to any new patch if you have mods installed.

New follower behaviors!

You can now give your followers a brand new set of engagement rules and tactical preferences to better suit your playstyle! Accessed via a new option in the interaction wheel, you can now assign different behaviors to your thralls and pets. Divided into two sections (Engagement and Tactics), this will give you better control than ever on how your armies react to incoming threats. Please note that these new options are for your thralls and pets who are set as base defenses and not actively set as your follower (to see which new changes apply to active followers, you can skip a few sections and go straight to the new Follower Command System!)

Engagement behaviors

Under this new menu, you can now choose and customize different rules of engagement for each of your followers. These new options are:

Guard Area With this option, your follower will only attack when a hostile engages with them or any friendly presence (including you!) within their detection radius.

Guard me You only want them to attack with those that directly attack you or those hostiles that you engage in combat with? This is your option!

Attack all enemies When subtlety isn’t part of master plan, just let your armies know about this option. They will engage with any hostile that enters their detection radius, old-school!

Attack nothing If you want them to know engaging with any threats might be above their gruel pay-grade, choose this option. Any follower with this behavior will not retaliate against hostile activity.

Attack and Chase Distance You can set at which distance your thrall or pet will