Highlights
- Adding animal taming to Nightingale could provide renewable resources and new ways to interact with wildlife in a player's home Realm.
- Nightingale could learn from Palworld's animal-taming features to enhance gameplay without replicating them entirely.
- Introducing tamed animals as transportation options could improve traversal in the vast and open Fae Realms of Nightingale.
Inflexion Games should consider letting players tame animals in Nightingale. This feature could help bring a lot of life to the overall game, - specifically in a player’s home Realm - by providing renewable resources and new ways to interact with animals.
Given how prominent this feature is in Palworld, it would arguably be a good example for Nightingale to learn from if it ever does add this kind of feature. Nightingale doesn’t necessarily have to go all-in on replicating Palworld’s animal-taming features, but it could still stand to borrow a few helpful features.
How Nightingale Compares To Games Like Valheim, Palworld
As much as recent survival-crafting games show their general influence in Nightingale, the game isn’t afraid to chart its own ambitious path.
Why Nightingale Should Consider Allowing Players to Tame Wild Animals
Letting players farm livestock in their home realm could be a great way to offer renewable resources that would let players further develop their home realm. Most of the common resources in Nightingale are already renewable because of the wandering Realm Spirits that replenish the local plant and animal wildlife, but it seems like these Realm Spirits are only available in Forest Biomes for now. Consequently, players who have chosen a Desert or Swamp Biome for their Abeyance Realm in Nightingale don’t have such easy access to renewable resources at the moment, and being able to raise livestock could help address this problem.
Allowing players to tame and raise animals could also be a great way to expand upon the types of interactions that players have with wildlife. As it currently stands, Nightingale has a ‘loot hobo’ problem, where players have little to no reason not to kill most of the animals they encounter throughout Nightingale’s Fae Realms.
‘Loot hobo’ is an increasingly popular term that refers to gamers who habitually kill nonessential NPCs to obtain their loot.
Palworld arguably does a great job of encouraging players not to be loot hobos by giving them various other ways to interact with animals besides outright killing them for their resources. Palworld’s animal-taming features are admittedly quite complex, whereas players have to manage their pal’s workloads by giving them breaks and access to recreational amenities. While Palworld’s advanced agency for wildlife wouldn’t quite fit Nightingale’s gameplay mechanics, at least being able to tame wildlife could be a big improvement for the game, bringing more life to a player’s home Realm.
Nightingale’s Early and Endgame Could Use More Traversal Options
Additionally, tamed animals could potentially provide players with diverse transportation options. The game’s complex crafting system allows players to make gear and utilize Realm Cards in Nightingale that provide improved stamina efficiency and increased movement speed, but this doesn’t make up for the fact that there aren’t many traversal options in the game. Not to mention, investing in this kind of gear would mean that players are missing out on other stat boosts as a tradeoff.
Nightingale’s Fae Realms are large and open environments, and exploring all of their secrets can be quite time-consuming. This is especially a problem for playing Nightingale solo, which is why Nightingale should arguably let players tame and ride animals to get around faster.
At the moment, the only traversal tools that players have access to are umbrellas and climbing picks. Umbrellas in Nightingale allow players to land safely from falling great distances and glide while airborne. Climbing picks in Nightingale allow players to scale vertical obstacles, while also giving players access to a lateral dodge. Combining dodging with gliding is currently the fastest way to get around.
While dodging and gliding is a more stamina-efficient and faster alternative to sprinting, it feels like a temporary solution to a bigger problem. Consequently, allowing players to tame and ride animals could be a more fitting solution to Nightingale’s lack of traversal options. While Nightingale doesn’t quite have to go as in-depth with animal mounts as Palworld, where players can fly around at ridiculous speeds, but having the option to at least ride land animals or have animal companions haul a player’s offhand storage could be a big improvement for Nightingale.
