4-6: Belle of the Ball

Once you've started a base, the game will inform you every once in a while that “Materials Trader is on its way to Your Outpost” or some such. These events broadly fall into three categories: Visiting merchants, shakedowns, and raids. Which ones you'll get depend on your base's location (and in the case of raids, who you've pissed off).

The general flow of it goes like this: First, you get the notification, which means that the group is leaving its point of origin and making its way toward you. This point of origin is generally the faction's closest holding to your location. They travel to your base, taking however long the walk takes them, fighting whatever attacks them along the way—depending on what regions they have to cross, this does mean they can get eaten by beak things or what have you. If they manage to avoid such a fate, they arrive at your base, you trade with them or kill them or get killed by them or whatever, and the timer generally starts again for them to return in a few days.

It seems word has gotten out about the gang's new base. They're officially popular. Already, there are two events on the way: A trading caravan from the Western Hive and a shakedown from the Dust Bandits.

We can track both these groups' approach on the map. The white dot near Stack is the Hive trader while the red dot represents the Dust Bandits. The other dots are not related—the blue dots are just Ells and Pilaf on their way back from The Hub. The second white dot, just south of the base, is a wandering tech hunter named Headbutt who wants to do some shopping. This differs from the trade caravan event in that we can't speak with her or trade with her proactively. Instead, she'll seek out shop counters, which are a special kind of buildable storage structure. If we had any, she'd walk up to them and maybe decide to buy something from them of her own choosing. Unfortunately, the gang has not yet built any; shopping NPCs will only buy food, liquor, hashish, and medkits, none of which the gang is currently producing in surplus. As such, Headbutt will just end up puttering around the base for a bit before leaving.

The Dust Bandits arrive shortly after Headbutt. Their leader immediately starts taunting the gang. This would normally be where we would have the option to speak to the Dust Boss and either acquiesce by giving him money or start a fight by telling him to go jump in an acid lake. The Dust Bandits hate the gang's guts, though, so talking is not an option. They will simply attack once their boss is done jawin'.

Despite being hostile, the bandits will stand there politely while their boss beaks off. Karst runs back and forth right through their ranks unmolested several times during this speech, grabbing several batches of materials to build some small wind generators on the roof of the lab. We can attack them at any time, of course, but it's fun to let them ramble on.

The gang takes care of the Dust Bandits without too much problem. A couple bandits break off from the mêlée to attack Headbutt, who dispatches them just as easily. The event officially ends when the gang takes out the bandits' War Leader—kind of. War Leader is a designation given to the leader of base raids but it's not quite the case that everyone gives up once you defeat the boss. If the War Leader falls and enough of their compatriots are still standing, the title will pass to one of the remaining members and you'll have to defeat that person before the game officially considers the raid defeated. This can happen up to a couple times in a single raid.

In this case, the Dust Boss just happens to be the last one knocked down anyway, so he keeps his title. When he climbs to his feet again a while after the “Bandit Demands has been defeated” message pops, he knows better than to stick around. The gang lets him sprint off into the sunset.

Will he make it very far with that gaping stomach wound? Eh. His problem. Shoulda thought of that before bringing a raiding party here.

Soon after the fighting's done, Ells and Pilaf return with the research. Outlaw Hana, Cat, and Green Finger reach the base soon thereafter. Cat gets a twinkle in his eye when he sees the new lab and throws himself right into it, planning out a long list of research to carry out. It's time to start on Research Tier 3.

Starting with the ability to build large buildings and an electrical crafting bench to work raw copper into electrical components, Cat's research list includes things like crossbow crafting, skeleton repair beds, hashish production, and efficiency improvements to a wide variety of structures. The whole list is slated to take him 87 hours to get through. A good base takes a long time to build, though; that time'll pass like nothing.

Half an hour after Cat gets the list all sorted, the Hive trader arrives. They waste no time launching into a sales pitch.

Ells is disappointed to find that they do not actually have any boots for sale. What they have is massive stacks of building materials and iron plates, a few of their patented economy limbs, some research books, medkits, and food. For some reason they also have a single cactus and a single sheaf of wheat.

Ells buys a few ration packs, highly nutritious food to keep everyone working a while longer. Five days after starting the base, the gang is still nowhere near making enough food to sustain themselves. Green Finger's expertise is helping but they're going to have to keep expanding the farms to hit that point.

Later that day, mid-afternoon, another trader comes by. Seems like everyone wants a piece of the action. This one is a band of nomads looking to sell some animals.

Silvershade decides a bonedog would be nice. For companionship, of course! Not for eating. They buy a cute little pup from the nomads' caravan.

Meet Ankle! My girlfriend came up with the name; I think it's very charming. Ankle will be helping defend the base for the foreseeable future. While bonedogs get very strong in later stages of life, pups are incredibly weak and fragile, with less HP per body part than a hive worker (70 versus the worker's 75). They are also, for some reason, incredibly slow. Bonedog pups run at a measly 8 mph, half the speed of one of the gang's slower members. If you've ever had to try and catch an excited dog, you're probably going "God, if only" right now. In-game, though, it means the gang would be forced to carry her or walk at a dirge's pace if they took her out exploring, so in the base she stays.

Eventually, Ankle will be able to keep up with most humanoids—elder bonedogs can run up to 21 mph—but it'll take 44 days for her to reach the elder stage of life. Even with base stuff taking a much longer timespan than the gang's ramblings thus far, that won't be for a while yet.