Dev Diary #159 - Active Living

Last week, we got a glimpse of what we are adding to the Wandering Nobles DLC. Today, we are back to discuss the new Wandering lifestyle and the new activities it unlocks in more depth.

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New Lifestyle​

As mentioned last week, it is set up like all the other lifestyles in the game, with 27 perks spread across 3 lifestyle trees, 3 new traits, and 3 attached focuses. Unlike our other lifestyles in the game, it is not connected to an education trait but to the Traveler trait. Now, you will gain a 10% monthly gain from the base Traveler trait and an additional 20% for every level in the Wanderer trait path.

The way we see this lifestyle is that for some characters, it might be something to go for right away to use some of its bonuses. For many others, however, it would rather be a natural step after finishing a tree in another lifestyle and having had time to travel around to build up their Traveler trait.

Last week, we looked at the whole tree to see what it looked like for a landed character, whereas this time, I will show what it looks like for a landless character. The two rightmost trees have minor variations, whereas the Inspection tree had to be almost entirely recreated for the new play style.

As we start looking through each perk, I will show variations of each perk, if any, and talk a bit about each. That said, it’s only natural to start with the first tree we made for the new lifestyle.

Wayfarer

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When explaining the fantasy of the tree to people, I often used my father as an example. This is not the person who goes out in the forest for the sake of going anywhere, but rather someone who enjoys the journey itself. They enjoy traveling, and exactly where they end up is less important.

Before we start, one last thing to say is a bit about lifestyle philosophy when we created these new lifestyle trees:

• We wanted each tree's first perk (intro perk) to be generally suitable for anyone, so it is easy to dip into any of them and still feel like you get some kind of bonus worth taking. We believe it is easier to entice people to go further down the tree if they have invested some points.

• Then, we have a midpoint where we unlock the activity, which we wanted to be a halfway-capstone trait—it is supposed to define the tree.

• We also included one capstone perk right before the trait so you would feel it is worth finishing up the rest of the tree.

• Every tree should have at least two themes that will synergize throughout the tree.

• You should be active to gain the tree's bonuses. You engage with this lifestyle; the lifestyle does not engage with you.

So, with that in mind, what were the themes for the Wayfarer tree? We attached it to Fame (Prestige Experience) and Stress Loss. Attaching it to fame, rather than Prestige, enables us to give out some more sources without worrying about giving out an abundance of Prestige to the player. We also wanted to include a bit of a “friendly ruler traveling through their domain” kind of feel to it, so we have some perks trying to enable that fantasy.

Now, let’s have a look at the perks for Wayfarer.

Well