I feel like the game is in serious need of late-game snowballing.

[Zadok]

Struggling to survive and manage your resources is something you will be doing your entire game up until you get richer or until you reach end-game.

The reason I said it needs more "snowballing" is because at a certain point in the game, despite how well you're doing, the progress just suddenly slows down almost to a near stop.

At late end game, when you are rich with resources, and I mean RICH. When you have absolutely everything, tons of weapons at your side, all the best equipment and so on. You suddenly realize that the only thing you can reliably do at that point is still just survive, and buy more arrows, so you can catch a new animal for meat, so you can survive for longer, rinse and repeat.

Now I guess you can just say "homie you just finished the game what more do you want, do you expect there to ALWAYS be more end game content?" or something, but I think you'd be dead wrong, and missing the point.

There is numerous things that I imagine would take a while to develop, but would be completely worth it at the end:

1. Making it easier to get what you're trying to find and buy in villages

After killing many, many njerpez warriors in the woods and even wiping one foreign trader group by forcing them to come in 1 by 1 in a tight area in the forest, I had a lot to sell, I could basically buy anything I wished. But the problem was that the armor I was looking for, the better spear I was looking for, was nowhere to be found in all of the villages I searched through.

Even though I found multiple of let's say masterwork of whatever item I don't remember was looking for (but I do remember I was looking for a masterwork something) I didn't find it when I needed it.

So basically for all this hard work that I went through, grinding and having panic attacks almost starving in the middle of nowhere, I get all these goods just so the game can say "lol you wont find anything you want to buy anyway".

So then, after spending hours running from village to village, dodging waters, animals and being paused because my character saw a stray earthworm 50 times between every village journey, the thought of just quitting the game started coming up to me.

No matter how badly I didn't want to feel like not playing the game anymore, I started feeling that way because I felt after all these great rewards I earned I was just told to piss off and go buy some more food with them or something minor that I don't need by the game itself.

How I think it can be fixed:

A mechanic where you can come to a village member, and ask them to find a specific item for you, which you will pay for, 50% extra or double, whatever. Something there to just make processing resources and goods easier.

I even saw something very similar to my suggestion in the dev list:

Ability to ask a craftsman to make you a certain item; to be paid and obtained after it's ready

So basically my suggestion is only different in that I also suggest it to be for any item of varying quality, all that you have to pay for, extra

But if asking for a random item to be brought to you is not preferred, simply asking for a blacksmith to craft you a mace of sword at some point in early-mid game should be enough without having to travel across the globe 8 times to find it, but I wish it wasn't that limited so you can get the rarer stuff like Masterwork Hauberks or something like that without having to aimlessly waste time and the will to play the game roaming the map so you can HOPEFULLY run into a group of traders and if you manage to get lucky in finding them, then you can HOPE they HOPEFULLY have the item you want, it's just tiring.

It could also make it not so important to have to build your camp so close to the Driikilais or whatever they were called, if you wanted to get more advanced gear.

And it's not just making it straight up easier without any cost, because remember, the prices would be much lower if you were to go actually find the item yourself, instead of hiring someone to locate it for you.

And also:

2. The ability to have an actual human companion(s)

When I say an actual human companion, I mean someone who won't just run back home to mommy and daddy 3 seconds later after you hire him, leaving you mid journey. The ability to manage an actual group of people, that you have to feed, but gain the ability to clothe them and arm them with whatever you can. This would be extremely fun, having your group go from shoddy bows and arrows to try and hunt, to armored with thick furs and mails later on in the game that you will use to attack Njerpez camps.

Again I am aware this is already probably possible to an extent, but I wouldn't bother buying a dog if it was just doing to arbitrarily leave for no reason because a timer expired, not because I lost it. Same for human companions, which is why I never waste my time and resources on them.

I feel like this wouldn't require TOO much programming and work, since the ability to have a companion is in the game itself, it's just kept weak and limited like the developers REALLY want you to be alone and sad your entire life, especially when you're in your log house with dozens of expensive furs with no one to share them with, or no inspiration to go and look for better gear because you already have most of the best gear.

So I do understand that probably implementing this would take a lot of time and energy, considering the fact it was decided it wasn't unbalancing the flow of the game too much and was even possible in the first place without any limitations of the base game making it impossible. But I just think this is something that would overall benefit the game.

[PALU]

I believe the suggestion contradicts itself: So, you've got all the riches you can dream of, and things get boring, so instead of chasing after those elusive items you want, you just want to buy them so you can sit around and be completely bored? Trying to get equipment is one of the few challenges remaining when basic survival has been taken care of.
As noted, after a certain point cost is almost completely irrelevant, but regardless, a villager who does blacksmithing on the side is unlikely to be capable of producing high quality gear of any type: the items will be adequate, but probably not better than that, and metal armor would definitely not be something they could produce.
It can also be noted that Iron Age Finland was dirt poor, so you wouldn't find a lot of riches in villages, and certainly not a lot of high quality gear (the game is probably overly generous in that regard from a realism point of view).

Human companions of a more permanent nature is not something that's trivial to implement, although I believe it's in the long term plans to at least make it possible to get a spouse. However, there's a lot of game infrastructure that's needed for permanent companions to make sense.

It can also be noted that a good reason to hire companions temporarily is a certain quest that's tricky to perform alone...

But yes, the game currently runs of of challenges once basic survival has been ensured and a homestead has been built.

[Dungeon Smash]

Permanent companions is already something that's in planning for the future.

As for the "Requesting items..." suggestion: It's not that bad of an idea to ask a craftsman to make something for you, a bow or a punt or some arrows or something.  This could even trigger a quest: "I will do what you ask, but I need a fine handaxe in return."  However, I don't think economics in the Iron Age Finland worked quite the way you are imagining... for one thing, most communities in URW would not have had blacksmiths.  Most iron goods were imported.  Only in Driik towns might you find a full-time blacksmith, but those communities generally already have plentiful iron goods to trade.

[Zadok]

I believe the suggestion contradicts itself: So, you've got all the riches you can dream of, and things get boring, so instead of chasing after those elusive items you want, you just want to buy them so you can sit around and be completely bored?

I wasn't saying that NOT getting those items is boring, what I'm trying to say is that not being able to process them efficiently, and the things you have to go through to get the higher class gear, is what causes frustration in my games.

I didn't mean to suggest "i have all good gear now my game boren", my point was that if you have the goods, you can trade them for anything you need for survival, axes, tools, food, anything. But when you reach a certain point in the game, where you have dozens of high quality furs and many expensive weapons you don't plan to use, you suddenly can not really improve what you have in terms of gear at that point within a reasonable amount of time, and without it being frustrating running from village to village hoping to not run into a bandit group at the wrong time just to have a little chance of finding a better kaumo spear, or a kaumo spear at all, if your luck is bad.

When it comes to other things preventing my suggestions, like realism, balance and all, when it comes to those things, your opinion, intuition and choice is of course prioritized over mine, so if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I completely understand that, so no worries.

[Zadok]

Permanent companions is already something that's in planning for the future.

As for the "Requesting items..." suggestion: It's not that bad of an idea to ask a craftsman to make something for you, a bow or a punt or some arrows or something.  This could even trigger a quest: "I will do what you ask, but I need a fine handaxe in return."  However, I don't think economics in the Iron Age Finland worked quite the way you are imagining... for one thing, most communities in URW would not have had blacksmiths.  Most iron goods were imported.  Only in Driik towns might you find a full-time blacksmith, but those communities generally already have plentiful iron goods to trade.

Yeah I didn't think that deep about it, and fundamentally all I'm suggesting is an easier way to process valuables for things that aren't your everyday tools and clothes. In whatever form. If, of course, it's possible, preferable and is not messing up the lore of the game.