Factions
Added in v1.4.0. Every race is grouped into one of three factions alongside a handful of vanilla creatures. None of your faction's mobs attack you first, and several of them go a step further and become merchants.
Factions is brand new in v1.4.0 and has not had extensive play-testing yet. The peace and trading behaviour described here is what the code does, not a guarantee every edge case has been checked in a live game. If a faction mob attacks you when it shouldn't, or a shop behaves oddly, that's worth reporting rather than assuming it's intentional.
The three factions
| Faction | Races | Mobs |
|---|---|---|
| Black Forest | Trenta, Trol, Furling | Greydwarf, Greydwarf Elite, Greydwarf Shaman, Fuling, Goblin Brute, Goblin Shaman, Troll |
| Mountain | Skadi, Fenrir, Dvergar | Drake (Hatchling), Wolf, Ulv, Fenring, Fenring Cultist, every Dverger variant |
| Swamp | Aswid, Draugh, Skeleton | Ghost, Skeleton, Poison Skeleton, Draugr, Draugr Elite, Wraith, Leech, Abomination, Blob (and Oozer) |
Peace only runs one way within a faction's own members - a Dvergar and a Skadi are both Mountain, but that doesn't make the Dvergar peaceful toward Skadi, only toward the listed mobs. Player-versus-player hostility is never touched.
How this relates to each race's own hostility rules
Several races already had their own hostility exemptions before Factions existed - see
Race overview for Draugh, Fenrir, Furling,
Skeleton, Trenta and Aswid's progressive truces, each implemented as its own
BaseAI.IsEnemy patch. Factions is additive on top of those, not a replacement: a race
already exempted from a mob by its own rule stays exempted either way. What Factions
actually adds is coverage for the three races that had none before - Trol, Skadi
and Dvergar had zero built-in peace with anything until Factions closed that gap - plus
the trading half, which nothing else in the mod provides, for every race including the six
that already had peace.
Trading
A faction mob that can talk becomes a merchant the instant it spawns: approach one you're at peace with and press E to open its shop. Buying and selling always happen at the same price - nothing is a loss to sell back to the mob you bought it from.
Not every faction mob can trade. Creatures with no talk-capable rig (Leech, Abomination, Blob, the Drake) are folded into a relative's shop instead - you'll still see their trophies and drops for sale from whichever mob in their family does the talking.
See the faction merchant catalogue for every item every shop buys and sells.
A merchant mob stops wandering and stops attacking while you're actively trading with it, and stays passive for a few seconds after you close the shop.
Turning it off
Since v1.4.9, two switches under Factions in Configuration Manager — both on by
default and read live, so flipping either takes effect without restarting the game:
- Faction truce — mobs your race is at peace with leave you alone. Turn this off and
every creature treats you exactly as vanilla would. This covers both halves of the
peace system, not just the faction one: the same
BaseAI.IsEnemycheck also carries Fenrir's wolves, the Aswid's progression list, the Draugh's undead, the Trenta's Black Forest, the Sverm's invertebrates, the Furling's Plains roster and the Skeleton's undead — so switching it off gives those passives up along with the faction truce, for every race that had one. Hitting a mob still starts a fight either way; retaliation was never governed by any truce. The Dvergar mercenaries' truce with wild dvergr is untouched by this switch — that one is between two NPCs and has nothing to do with hostility toward you. - Faction merchants — decides whether faction mobs can be traded with at all. Turn it off
and they stop offering the
E - Talkprompt and go back to being ordinary creatures.
Two switches rather than one because the halves fail differently: the truce is invisible when it works, while the merchants are a whole second interaction bolted onto creatures vanilla never meant to talk — anyone chasing a mod conflict wants to be able to rule out one without losing the other.
Known caveats
- Only your own race's faction membership is checked. A friend playing a different race in your party will still be attacked by mobs that leave you alone.
- A merchant's stock and prices are fixed - there's no reputation or discount system beyond what each race's own perks (like Dvergar's trader favour) already provide.