Patch Notes: The Living World II

More people on the roads

New travellers set out from the towns: farmers leading a pack horse to market day, hunters heading into the wild, patrols of knights walking a round between a city and its region's towns, nobles travelling between courts with their retainers, and minstrels going to play another town's tavern for the evening.
Bigger towns now send out more pedlars, pilgrims and couriers.
Parties at night now stop at a roadside inn when one is close ahead. Otherwise they make camp, and every camp has a fire. Parties that meet on the road greet each other once in passing, warn each other of trouble behind them, and share a camp when they stop near each other.
Roads a patrol has walked recently see half the trouble. A patrol knight who sees a wanted criminal draws on them, even one the knight is on good terms with.

A merchant's caravan now travels with a horse and wagon (two wagons from a great house's city), with its guards walking in front and behind. A noble's procession brings a baggage wagon, and pedlars and farmers lead a pack horse.
The wagons' wheels turn as they roll. At camp the wagons are parked around the fire with their horses unhitched. Seen from the travel map, a caravan's mark is a wagon.
Trade with them: talk to a caravan's merchant, a farmer or a pedlar on the road to buy and sell. Each one keeps a shop's stock and has a limited purse for the trip, and gives friends 10% off.
Hire on as a guard: a merchant's caravan offers you a contract from the day before it sets out until it arrives. Stay within 300 m of it until it reaches its town to be paid by the day, plus more for each foe you beat. Fall behind for more than an hour, let the merchant die, or rob or kill any of them yourself, and you're not paid. If outlaws rob the caravan on the way, you're still paid for getting its people through. Offline, outdoors and with no enemies near, you can travel on with them, skipping ahead to their next stop.
Rob them: beat every guard of a caravan yourself and it surrenders. Its goods and purse are yours to take. But any survivor who reaches a town reports you: theft, pickpocketing and murder on the road are now charged as crimes in the region where they happened. Leave no witnesses and nobody hears about it.

Each region now has bands of outlaws (up to four), named, with a hideout off a road between two of its towns. A band holds up the parties too weak to fight it off and keeps what it took.
Find a hideout and you'll see the camp: tents, a fire, the band, and a chest of what they've stolen. Kill every one of them to rout the band. Step away and come back, and the ones you've already killed stay down; an outlaw chasing you doesn't vanish because you ran. The people it robbed will be grateful, and the region's towns will talk about it. A new band moves in later.
Travellers warn you about camps near the road they're on. A band you've heard of is marked on the travel map as a rumoured hideout, near it but never exactly on it.

Adventurers now travel together in named companies, such as "The Lantern Company", and dive dungeons more often as a group. Pilgrims going the same way on the same day travel as a band, and each region keeps its own holy day when pilgrims set out for its temple towns.
A company introduces itself by name. Your chronicle's People page lists the companies of the people you know.

A company works its way through a dungeon stop by stop, block by block. If you meet them, they're wherever their route has brought them. You may hear fighting ahead before you see them.
Talk to them to have them join you, lead on to their next stop, or part ways. Badly hurt members fall back, and a beaten company heads for the exit.
Offline, for a day after a company passes through, the monsters at the places they reached lie dead with their packs emptied and the treasure there is picked over. Quest monsters and items, fixed monsters and fixed treasure are never touched. Online, the room's dungeon is unchanged.
A rival company that isn't friendly won't like you taking treasure it was heading for.

A trader you've hired in a home that's open to the public now sells to the town's people, not only to players. Every hour, the town's people may buy a piece you've listed, at your price. The lower your price against what the piece is worth, the more likely it is to sell. A piece priced above 60% of its worth never sells to them, and a piece is never worth more to them than its own price.
Pieces you bought at a shop counter online never sell to townspeople: they buy what you found, looted or made.
A town's traders sell at most four pieces an hour between them. Each seller sells at most two an hour and 20,000 gold a day. Market tax and fees apply as for a sale to a player. Quest items and keepsakes never sell this way, and a crafted piece sells for no more than a found one.
You'll see the buyer walk in to your house a little later. Some townspeople just come in to look. Your Vendor page shows who bought what: "Sold to Ada Lark of Wayrest".

News now travels between towns: travellers bring what their home town knew when they set out, and couriers bring news from one town further.
Your reputation travels too. Strangers who have heard of your deeds (good or bad) may greet you by them. Hearsay alone never makes anyone your friend or your enemy.

Books and potion recipes no longer jump to a much higher price after passing between players online (through a shared container or a shop's shelf in a room), which let them sell back for more than they cost.

THE LIVING WORLD II (LW9-LW16) + AUDIT LW-II and LW-II-2: traffic on the roads, caravans with horses and wagons, outlaws, companies in the deep, townsfolk at your trader, word between towns by @Lattymoy in #749

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.7613...app-v0.1.7672