Tribes of Midgard has you stepping into the shoes of a mighty Viking warrior to defend their village against the horde of Helthings as they prepare to take down The Seed of Yggdrasil. When the game launched, the team kicked it off with The Wolf Saga for season one, and season two will be the Serpent Saga, giving players the chance to defeat the world serpent, Jörmungandr. During these seasons, players also can participate in festive events, mixing things up from the typical gameplay with some holiday effects, additional challenges, and exclusive rewards.
We reached out to Tribes of Midgard’s development team, Norsfell, to speak with the team’s CEO, Julian Maroda, about how the team handles these limited-time holiday events, notable features appearing in the Serpent Saga, and how sagas won’t cut out content for Tribes of Midgard players.
The first holiday event Tribes of Midgard ran was Halloween, which doesn’t usually warrant Vikings or Norse mythology visuals. Still, Norsfell tackled the challenge and created Valhalloween, giving the community many Halloween-themed scares. With Yulidays, the team took a lot of what they learned from Valhalloween and improved upon it.
“The good news is – people want more Tribes of Midgard!” Julian shared. “So, rather than try to change things up too much, we approached this event with some key features and rewards that the community responded well to, including character cosmetics, a pet, village decorations, and adding festive updates.” These festive updates were added to the home village players frequently visit, and the enemies they find throughout their world, namely, Goblins and Dökkálfar, now known as Snowblins and Yulálfars.
A notable piece of content that did make it into this year’s Tribes of Midgard Yulidays was Bucky the Yule Goat. “We’ve never seen a present-bearing goat in any other game,” Julian explained. “It is such a unique and adorable creation that I’m glad he made it into our first Yulidays.”
While Yulidays does not change the overall game too much, that’s not the case with Tribes of Midgard’s Season 2 Serpent Saga. In it, players will be able to set sail on the high seas with iconic Viking boats to discover large islands and find exclusive loot and enemies they wouldn’t be able to find on the mainland.
“The Serpent Saga is going to change the way you play Tribes of Midgard completely,” Julian said. “Boats add a new, faster way to tackle the world of Midgard in your quest to take down the Saga Bosses.”
The development of adding another biome surrounding players throughout their game was no easy task. “Adding an entirely new biome and the addition of islands was logistically and technically challenging,” Julian shared. “So many existing game structures, including navigation and map rebalancing, had to be changed, and from there, it’s a butterfly effect. We also had to work around the challenge of making boats holding multiple players at a time.”
Boats are an iconic element of Vikings, as they used them to cross the ocean to conquer and find homes in faraway lands. It makes traveling across the map much easier in Tribes of Midgard, cutting the usual travel time significantly down, especially before discovering the fast travel shrines.
“The boats you see in-game take inspiration from the historic Viking longships, with each of the three developing that framework,” Julian said. “The Drakkar, for example, looks like your typical Viking longboat you’d see in history books or museums with the shields along the sides, the curved bow, and the flattened shape. Drakkar means Dragon, so we also pulled inspiration from the name into the design.”
With the addition of the Serpent Saga, many players may wonder what will happen with the Wolf Saga or battling Fenrir. Well, even though the next Saga Boss is arriving with the Serpent Saga, Fenrir will not be going away. When a new season of Tribes of Midgard is added to the game, players can choose which Saga they want to complete during their playthrough. They can choose to do the current one or any previous ones. None of the old content will be removed from the game, merely added as another expansive mechanic to explore and add to the layer of Tribes of Midgard. Some players may even have the chance to complete multiple Sagas during a single playthrough if they’re fast enough.
Yulidays will be available in Tribes of Midgard from December 14 alongside the launch of the Serpent Saga and will continue until January 3, 2022. The Serpent Saga will continue well into 2022, with more planned features on the way.
