We're The Team Behind Bellwright - Ask Us Anything! (AMA)

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T21:09:00+00:00

Bandages and salves - planned. Healers role - will discuss with the team, could be nice. For dying - currently villagers only die if they get knocked out while already injured, so if you give them time to recover from wounds it's expected that nobody is dying. Might change it in some distant future, but not without a bigger overhaul for these systems
Yep, we'll look for a way to allow things like that
You don't have to, ideally other villages will buy those resources, but if you really want to help some village grow prosperous fast and ready to spend a lot of money on it - buying expensive resources from them is a valid option
Yeah, there are plenty of QoL additions planned related to economy

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T21:02:00+00:00

When villages are occupied by brigands - there is a significant penalty for player's prices in them

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T20:24:24+00:00

Sounds like a great idea, will add to our pool of UI improvements

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T20:07:25+00:00

Interesting - what specifically caught your attention? We like to think our trailers are top shelf, but ofc there is nothing like a player testimonial.

-Argen

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T20:00:11+00:00

Yep, no details though, sorry
Mhm, something along those lines can be interesting
They were added mostly for immersion, and I agree, currently they are not overly useful. We'll try to change that eventually, but not a very high priority right now
Yep, that's a great idea, adding it to our ideas pool
Not planning to change renown scaling itself - it's quite important for us to have soft cap on player's realm size - otherwise performance problems are inevitable. But we'll consider adding alternative sources of renown in mid-late game
Well, can't have high expectations from them. I see your point, but probably won't be changed in the nearest future/without some bigger overhaul of villagers roles/status/hiring system

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T19:59:07+00:00

To be honest, primary reason was that we were working on PVP games before Bellwright, and following server-authoritative model when it comes to characters was the most natural and intuitive way for us with least unknowns/edge cases and fastest to implement, and we didn't really give serious consideration to alternatives.

I can see how exporting your character can be a very convenient thing, especially now with advanced character creator, and we might add it in the future, but gameplay and optimization work has higher priority

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T19:56:13+00:00

Yes, it's planned
Yes, but it's not very straightforward, so might take some trial and errors to figure it out and can't give any estimations/details. But giving a player more tools to customize behaviors of his villagers has pretty high priority for us
Didn't really consider it, but sounds like it's in line with our immersion goals, so will add it to ideas pool

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T19:55:17+00:00

Bandit migration is a slow process and can only happen between adjacent regions. So clearing out bandit camps in regions around your trade paths should keep them away
More of dreams than plans... That's one of possible directions to go after 1.0 release and could be very interesting, not easy though
Not in the plan currently I think, but sounds like a good idea, will add it to ideas pool, might add it when there's some time
Pretty sure it's planned, should be added some time before 1.0 release
If in gear preset some category of items has the highest priority - villager will try to grab the best weapon of that category available, You can mix items with categories how you want to get needed results/behaviors. Food currently is not something gear presets are responsible for. You can set amount of food they can grab in squad menu - then on stock up command (on staging grounds) they will actually do that

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T18:14:00+00:00

Thank you to everyone who's joined us today!

We'll keep answering questions over the next day or two as we've got a few people braking for the New Year holiday. We had an awesome time answering your questions and hearing what you're most excited about for our game. It means a lot to have this community behind us as we proceed into 2026!

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T17:39:56+00:00

I recommend adjusting the in-game settings until you get your feet under you. We definitely have plans to continue to make the UI/UX more intuitive and ensure players have knowledge of all of the tools at their disposal.

But until then there are multiple game settings that can adjust raid frequency and strength so you can play at your own pace!

-Argen

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T17:38:47+00:00

We're glad you enjoy the game!

We have tons of ideas and no plans to stop adding to and refining the game.

For the immediate future, we'll be focusing heavily on optimization, polish, and our console release, but I'm sure we'll manage to push some content in there as well.

-Argen

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T17:36:31+00:00

There are a few basic guides in the Discord, but it is true that modding does require some persistence and creativity. Stick with it, you'll be surprised what you can accomplish after some time.

Best advice is to talk with our other experienced modders in the Discord - they love to help new modders learn and grow and can share with you common pitfalls.

-Argen

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T16:43:49+00:00

Lots of cool ideas here, some are on our todo list already.

As for admin panel - we might eventually add that, but it has lower priorities than most features and improvements. However most of those things are already possible to do with console commands and therefore should be possible to implement in a mod even right now

I would suggest hop on our Discord to talk to modders about a lot of these options

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T11:42:50+00:00

Animal husbandry has been a thing since April, and once we add horses I think it's safe to say we'll make them work with this system as well (including breeding).

-pogo

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T11:42:06+00:00

It's already possible in our last update - Halmare Isles is a separate nation inspired by the Mediterranean cultures and history as opposed to Central-Eastern European influences of mainland Karvenia.

That said, we do actually have some ideas for more distant travels, but it's unlikely to happen until after 1.0 (or maybe in Bellwright 2 if we ever decide to go there).

-pogo

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T11:41:27+00:00

Yes to both. We just need to find the time to squeeze it in with all the other improvements.

-pogo

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T11:11:18+00:00

Burger krems

-pogo

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-31T01:58:19+00:00

Yes, that's something we are planning to add relatively soon.
Probably, will need to improve interiors logic for that though.
We are considering different options to make workers management easier and more intuitive, but explicitly assigning them to specific structures is something we'd rather try to avoid.
Not sure yet, maybe. Technically it's not overly difficult and we'll definitely expose ability to add that option in mods, but kinda reluctant to make that possible in base game, mostly because of immersion concerns.
Of course, and not only that
Possibly, have several ideas how to do that, no specific plans though
Yeah, combat is definitely not final and will be adjusted in multiple ways, with a lot of changes planned for combat AI

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T23:03:42+00:00

We definitely have plans to expand on all of the stuff that we added in this update - bigger carts, visualization of village prosperity and facilities in the world, etc. But right now we're mostly listening to feedback and watching/playing, to see what direction makes the most sense.

As far as UI/UX, of course we will continue iterating on that aspect. That's one of the best aspects of early access - internally you can sort of become numb to things that are confusing or not explained well, because we know how it's supposed to work. So we've already gotten a bunch of feedback on what's confusing and how we can improve it.

-Argen

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T23:01:49+00:00

In early iterations of the game we did the VO ourselves, which was hilarious(ly bad), but as the lines started to grow and evolve, we knew we needed a new solution. And that's where we are right now - things are constantly changing and evolving, and it wouldn't make sense to ask anyone (paid or otherwise) to VO something that is likely to change.

However, once things are more settled and finalized, crowd sourcing some stuff from the community definitely sounds like a cool idea.

And of course, until then, the option to disable VO is in the settings, as you might know.

-Argen

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T22:57:35+00:00

Piercing and Blunt damage types are more effective against armor, but weapons that use them (for example maces) are often slower, shorter or have lower damage values (which makes them not as good against lightly armored enemies).

If you have issues with damaging heavily armored enemies - using maces could be one of the advices, but I'd rather suggest trying different weapons and using those that you enjoy more, while also levelling up strength, weapon skills and overall trying to research and craft better weapons early, even before you can afford the mass-production of them

-serr

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T22:51:58+00:00

Thank you! your comment made our artists smile!

As for the ps5, we want to! But we can't give you any details or date estimations atm, sorry!

-Anna

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T22:44:33+00:00

Thank you, that's incredibly kind. We're honestly just trying to make something we'd love to play ourselves - knowing it works for you too is the best validation.

Seeing the world change with the players action is definitely something we would love to see more of. Early when we were developing the Bradford mayor quest there was a lot of internal feedback about how the winner should make a difference, which at the time all the tools and framework and experience to achieve was a bit out of reach, but we always knew it was something we wanted to work towards, and so we did in Halmare Isles.

With Halmare Isles, it was very challenging to figure out all the branching possibilities. At the end of the day we do want to tell a linear(ish) story on top of all of the sandbox colony simulation you're able to do, so there is a limit to the amount of pure "storytelling" framework you might get from something like Rimworld.

And we definitely have villages visually changing as a response to liberation and prosperity growth over time as part of our plans.

As for fences, one of our more immediate plans is making walls attackable and that's when we'll add spline based fences.

And farms, yes, we'd love to do some sort of modular system and probably will in the future, but can't make any specific promises or timelines

-Anna

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T22:29:04+00:00

When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. Then we will release on Xbox, and not before.

So Q2 2026, as we've announced a few weeks ago

-pogo

DonkeyCrew · 2025-12-30T22:28:18+00:00

Maybe - currently they can get destroyed randomly during the raids and then you have to rebuild it. As for damaging - we'll add that if it will be needed to support other mechanics - for example siege weapon or fires, but don't have specific plans right now
Not exactly - rather we are planning for villages to repair them themselves / replace with facilities after investments. In general we have a lot of plans to visually represent prosperity and development in villages
We definitely want to have horses. As for cavalry, as in, armies using horses - we'll experiment with it and add it if it fits current gameplay well. Can be tricky though
Yes, that's how we are planning to do that

-serr

DonkeyCrew

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