COMMUNITY - FORUMS - FAMILIES & NOBLE HOUSES
Question about children and inheritance

So I read the Design Journal 5 about Families & Family selection and now I have some questions about families, children and inheritance.

When talking about how to join a family they mention these 2 point:

  • Close it off. It will manifest as an NPC child in the world after about a month, and only you can possess its body at a later date. If you decide later to open it up or share its Child Code you can.

Question 1: Does this mean that if I close off one of my children, I have about 1 month(real life time?) to permadie and take it over. If I want to start over as a 15 year old? I am guessing if I don't die within a month, I can still take it over but it will be older than 15?

  • Open it up to the public. If you're looking to grow your family quickly and don't have enough people to do so this may be the best option. After the child reaches age 15 other players will be able to find your child in the Family Selection Screen. Due to the way inheritance works, this option will likely be more commonly used for 2nd and 3rd children. And remember, they’ll only find your child if their search query matches the constraints you've placed on players you want in your family.

Question 2: If I have my children open for the public, will they, if a player take it over, inherit anything from me and the family? Reading this it seems like only the first child (I am guessing if I close it) will inherit land, wealth etc. Basically my question is: If another players take over one of my children will they inherit stuff from me like, land, wealth, title(?) etc.? Which also leads onto my next question.

Question 3: Do I have to pick my first child as my heir? Will it be important for me to pick a heir before I let anyone else join my family as a child?

I know people have been talking about starting up families and then let there friends join by taking over their children. So I am guessing you don’t have to pick your first kid as a heir but I just want to be sure :)


3/28/2017 4:24:13 PM #1

I'm a little confused myself now. I know they've changed their minds at least once about how children would work and a few other things that effect the family system and I'm not sure if that was before or after the design journal. My understanding was that the 1 real world week = 1 Elyrian year would apply to everyone, but the design journal almost makes it sound like children will grow faster than adults.

Question 1: My understanding is that you will be able to take over a child between the ages of 15 and 18 automatically, and beyond that will cost some story points. This seems a pretty narrow window to me, but we don't know how difficult story points will be to gain or how much it will cost to take over a child a few years older than 18.

Questions 2 and 3: The Blog Post "Down the Rabbit Hole" discussed the changes they made to the heir system. You will be able to choose as your heir any NPC in your dynasty who is open or who you have the code for. You will need story points if they are older than 18, and the NPC cannot be older than 52, but you can pick a sibling, niece, nephew, child, grandchild, or even a parent if you die particularly young.

The "Down the Rabbit Hole" journal said that you can only lock your immediate descendants (and parents if they are NPC's), but you can pick extended family members as heirs if they are open. I think I heard somewhere that they were considering letting you pick an primary and secondary heir to lock from any of your family members, but I'm not sure if that's actually true.


Shieldwall Strong!

3/28/2017 6:39:18 PM #2

As far as I understand it...

Q1. When you have a child you can not immediate occupy that character, they must age and grow to at least 15. At this age they can take control of them if you perma die so there will be some time and error early on in the game to get the timing right on when to actually have children so they won't be middle age when you perma die.

Q2/3. Most transactions in the game will be done by contracts. There will be various types of contracts covering many areas of the game. These contracts will be used as a will passing items down to your children upon perma death. So you don't necessarily have to pass them down to a first born, you can pass items, in whole or in part, to which ever child you wish through the contract system.

Now when you open up a child for others they will not necessarily have access to your items. They can be taken over or married and unless you specify them as an heir, they have no access. They can be locked out of your bank account, crafting rooms, backpacks, and other items. There will be plenty of safeguards to protect you, your other children, and your family from the outside players.


"Count Eldric Blackmoore of The Haven, offering direct support for the Hunters, Explorers and Gathers of Elyria" the

3/28/2017 7:02:53 PM #3

Thanks for the answers, seems like there is still a bit of confusion or maybe lack of information about some part, so we just have to wait and see I guess :) But now I understand the whole inheritance part a bit better.

Good to know that I can protect my things. I wouldn't mind letting a random player join my family, but of course I don't know what kind of player they are and I wouldn't want them to end up destroying everything.