Faster travel

Faster travel in Ashes of Creation refers to the use of player ridden mounts and automated creatures that connect certain nodes.

• Public transportation via system driven land mounts or flying mounts.
• There is not going to be any "go to waypoint" (auto-pathing) mechanics (outside of these mechanics).

There will be connection points between certain nodes via the use of like flying automated creatures that you can use. – Steven Sharif

Estimated travel times

So why is travel important? We've talked about this in the past, the reasons why. We've all existed in games where teleportation is very easy to use and sometimes that can be a detriment because you may have activities like a caravan run that's happening and one person sees you from a certain guild and they do the raid callout to their guild "everyone open your portals and come here within a split second and we're going to just mob this group". No, well instead that opportunity doesn't exist. If you want to provoke or to gank an operation of another guild, you need to have foreknowledge. You need to prepare. You need to place your forces around that area; and that is an important aspect. In addition, it makes that travel meaningful. If you are having to spend time to move to a location, you're going to think about what can I do along the way? Why am I moving to that location? How is it more beneficial for me to be in that location versus where I am now? This is also in association with the fact that you are a citizen of a particular node and that node needs your assistance within its vicinity; and if you want to move outside of that vicinity there should be a really good reason for that and there's lots of great reasons for it. – Steven Sharif

Travel objective	Running.	Mounted.
From one end of a Metropolis (stage 6) node to the other	2.83 minutes	1.67 minutes
From the center of a node to the center of its direct neighbor	5 minutes	3.5 minutes
From the northernmost to southernmost points of a continent	75 minutes	50 minutes

Fast travel

Fast travel is limited in Ashes of Creation. None of these fast travel methods allow transportation of gatherables or materials.

There is very little teleportation in the world. Some of that does get unlocked through metropolises of a certain type. Additionally there are mounts that are faster travel and there are services that are fast travel between nodes. – Steven Sharif

• Scientific metropolises offer teleportation within their vassal network, which can extend across seas, and also include islands.
• Flight paths between coastal nodes or nodes within specific regions.
• Airships between metropolises. This was previously stated to be between scientific metropolises.
• Family summoning.

Faster travel in Ashes of Creation refers to the use of player ridden mounts and flying automated creatures that connect certain nodes.

Family summon

Skill	Icon	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Family summon		Long duration cast (30 seconds to a minute) with an approximate 30 minute cooldown that slowly summons each of your family members to your location (up to eight members). Players cannot be summoned in the following cases: While in combat, if they are corrupted, or if they are engaged in an event, such as node wars, guild wars, sieges, arenas or participation in the caravan system. If they have mats, gatherables or certs in their inventory. This will be tested in Alpha-2.	-	-

Roads

Alpha-1 early preview roading.

Our road system in-game is essentially driven by pre-placed routes that lead to this main artery of what was once the ancient highway system of Verra; and from there there are roads that become exposed when nodes advance; and we call those veins. They come off the main artery and then as nodes advance there are points of interest as Jeff was discussing earlier. These POIs that exist around the world and some of them share coverage with multiple nodes, but depending on which node advances to the stage that activates the point of interest it'll create these capillary roads so to speak that then stem off of the node itself. So you go from the main artery ancient road that's large- that kind of runs through different zones and whatnot- and that breaks down into the veins that lead to the specific encampments and villages and towns that then spawn off separate capillaries that lead to the points of interest in these areas that are hunting grounds. Those are not exposed initially and they come online as players advance the world. – Steven Sharif

Roads adjusting to adjacent node progression.

As nodes advance, these pre-laid road spots that exist connecting every possible route between certain node structures is going to adjust and adapt, both its material presentation, the type of roadwork that's present: It'll move from dirt road type, to perhaps a brick road, to perhaps some super ornate beautiful metropolis style road that will adjust around the world according to how these node structures begin to populate and advance.{ – Steven Sharif

Roads in Verra are both pre-generated and player influenced.

• The largest roads are referred to as arteries. These are remnants of what was once the ancient highway system of Verra.
• As nodes advance smaller roads, referred to as veins, connect the arteries to the nodes.
  • Roads will upgrade as nodes advance. Different roads will dictate the speed and type of caravan required (off road vs on road).
• Depending on the stages of node advancement, capillary roads will stem off the node to connect to points of interest.
• Roads or pathways are not worn into the landscape by repeated traffic over the same area.

Different seasons and events may affect access to various roads.

• Pathways that are open during summer may be closed during winter.
• Seasonal affects may cause obstacles or blockages to the transit of goods via caravan.
  • Some events may cause specific roadways to be blocked off.
  • Obstacles may present barriers on roads that players must remove to allow transit of goods.
• Water turning to ice in winter, enabling players to walk over the water but blocking access to what is underneath.
  • Ice will make roads bumpy and slippery.

Underrealm routes will open or close dynamically (based on node states).

• The location of Underrealm entrances throughout the world is focused around natural geographic choke-points that exist above ground. This provides alternate subterranean routes that can be used by caravans, raids, and other player activities.

• Not all entrances to the Underrealm will be open at the same time. This can shift dynamically (based on node states) that cause different routes to open up, which may be more or less advantageous than other routes.

Freeholds may not be placed in close proximity to roads.

Public transportation

There are multiple types of public transportation services where players can go AFK and be driven somewhere.

• Players can visit a node building and pay a fee to be driven via road to another node on their land mount of choice.
  • The node building can be upgraded to become a flight path, which allows longer direct connections to other nodes within a specific region that also have a flight path.

• Airships between metropolises. This was previously stated to be between scientific metropolises.
• It is possible that some public transportation services could be player-driven.

One of the nodes has the idea of an airship that can go from node to node and I'm certain that we will have harbors that do similar things with other node types... It might be something that could be player-driven... We're sure to have a taxi system you know where you load up a couple people and you drive them somewhere while you AFK. – Jeffrey Bard

See also

• Mounts
• Player movement